Soil Moisture-Climate Interactions in Land-Atmosphere Systems

Soil moisture serves as a pivotal interface between terrestrial surfaces and the overlying atmosphere, modulating the partitioning of energy and water fluxes that govern weather patterns, climate variability and extreme events. Water retained in the soil influences the balance between evapotranspiration and sensible heating, thereby affecting surface temperatures, cloud formation and precipitation. Variations in soil wetness can persist over time and space, creating a form of ‘hydrological memory’ that shapes responses to atmospheric forcing and alters the trajectory of droughts and heatwaves. In regions where soils become desiccated, the suppression of evaporation elevates sensible heat flux, amplifying thermal extremes and reinforcing atmospheric drying through feedback loops. Conversely, higher soil moisture enhances evaporative cooling, mitigates temperature peaks and can dampen the development of convective storms. These interactions exhibit strong seasonality and region-specific behaviour, governed by soil texture, vegetation cover and radiative conditions. Improved characterisation of soil moisture dynamics is crucial for refining land surface models, enhancing subseasonal to decadal climate predictions, informing water-resource management and guiding climate adaptation strategies in agriculture and ecosystem conservation.

Research from Nature Portfolio

Recent studies have quantified how coupling between soil moisture and the atmosphere accelerates greenhouse-gas-driven warming. In a global modelling framework, projections indicate that drier soils in an already warmer world intensify surface heating, contributing over 0.5 °C of additional warming across extratropical land by century’s end, and markedly increasing the frequency of extreme heat events. Complementary work has revealed that soil temperature extremes are rising more rapidly than air temperature extremes, particularly under dry conditions, emphasising the role of soil moisture–temperature feedback in fuelling heatwaves. Together, these findings underscore a non-linear feedback mechanism whereby soil drying and atmospheric warming reinforce one another, with important implications for climate projections and risk assessment of heat extremes.

Soil Moisture-Climate Interactions in Land-Atmosphere Systems publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in soil moisture-climate interactions in land-atmosphere systems across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Soil moisture memory: The persistence of soil moisture anomalies over time, influencing future land–atmosphere exchanges.

Soil–atmosphere coupling: The bidirectional exchange of energy, moisture and momentum between soil and the overlying air.

Sensible heat flux: Heat transfer from the land surface to the air by conduction and convection without phase change.

Latent heat flux: Energy flux associated with water phase change, primarily evaporation and transpiration.

Evapotranspiration: Combined water loss from soil evaporation and plant transpiration to the atmosphere.

Feedback mechanism: A process in which a change in one component of the climate system influences another, which in turn affects the original component.

References

1. Soil Moisture Memory: State‐Of‐The‐Art and the Way Forward. Reviews of Geophysics (2024).
2. Soil moisture–atmosphere coupling accelerates global warming. Nature Communications (2023).
3. Soil heat extremes can outpace air temperature extremes. Nature Climate Change (2023).
4. Importance of soil moisture conservation in mitigating climate change. Science Bulletin (2024).
5. Combined large-scale tropical and subtropical forcing on the severe 2019–2022 drought in South America. npj Climate and Atmospheric Science (2023).