Data availability
Daily data on soil moisture (0–7 cm, 7–28 cm, and 28–100 cm), precipitation, ET and snowmelt were derived from the ERA5-land reanalysis dataset. The data were sourced from the Copernicus Climate Data Store at a 0.25° × 0.25° spatial resolution (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-land?tab=overview)58. The daily global land temperature record was obtained from the Berkeley Earth land temperature dataset, which incorporates data from over 40,000 stations and employs kriging-base…
Data availability
Daily data on soil moisture (0–7 cm, 7–28 cm, and 28–100 cm), precipitation, ET and snowmelt were derived from the ERA5-land reanalysis dataset. The data were sourced from the Copernicus Climate Data Store at a 0.25° × 0.25° spatial resolution (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/reanalysis-era5-land?tab=overview)58. The daily global land temperature record was obtained from the Berkeley Earth land temperature dataset, which incorporates data from over 40,000 stations and employs kriging-based spatial interpolation at a 1° × 1° resolution, providing extensive spatial coverage from 1850 to the present (https://berkeleyearth.org/data/)77. Monthly precipitation and potential evapotranspiration data were derived from the HadCRUT4 dataset (hosted in the CEDA Archive). These data were interpolated using angular-distance weighting (ADW) from extensive weather station networks at a 0.5° × 0.5° resolution (https://archive.ceda.ac.uk/)78. The NDVI data used in this study were obtained from the NOAA Climate Data Record (CDR) of the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) Surface Reflectance at a 0.05° × 0.05° spatial resolution (https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/climate-data-records/normalized-difference-vegetation-index)70. Global land cover maps were obtained from the European Space Agency (ESA) Climate Change Initiative (CCI) Land Cover dataset. These maps provide 300-meter resolution data from 1992 to 2022, based on observations from the Project for On-Board Autonomy-Vegetation (PROBA-V), Sentinel-3 Ocean and Land Colour Instrument (OLCI), and Sentinel-3 Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) (https://cds.climate.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/satellite-land-cover)79. The global burned area data were collected from the MODIS burned area product (available post-2000; https://lpdaac.usgs.gov/products/mcd64a1v061/)80 and the AVHRR-LTDR burned area product (covering pre-2000; https://catalogue.ceda.ac.uk/uuid/b1bd715112ca43ab948226d11d72b85e/)81. We regridded all observational datasets to a common 0.5° × 0.5° latitude-longitude spatial resolution using bilinear interpolation.
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Acknowledgements
Y.C. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42301018). C.M. acknowledges support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (U24A20572). J.P. was supported by the Catalan Government grants SGR 2021–1333 and AGAUR2023 CLIMA 00118.
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Authors and Affiliations
State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Disaster Risk Reduction, Faculty of Geographical Science, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Yuanfang Chai, Chiyuan Miao, Xiaoyan Li, Jiachen Ji & Qi Zhang 1.
College of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China
Yuanfang Chai 1.
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
Amir AghaKouchak 1.
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
Yadu Pokhrel 1.
College of Water Sciences, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China
Yongshuo Fu 1.
CSIC, Global Ecology Unit CREAF-CSIC-UAB, Bellaterra, Catalonia, Spain
Josep Peñuelas 1.
CREAF, Center for Ecological Research and Forestry Application, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Catalonia, Spain
Josep Peñuelas
Authors
- Yuanfang Chai
- Chiyuan Miao
- Amir AghaKouchak
- Yadu Pokhrel
- Yongshuo Fu
- Xiaoyan Li
- Jiachen Ji
- Qi Zhang
- Josep Peñuelas
Contributions
Y.C. and C.M. led the writing, designed the research and performed the data analysis. A.A., Y.P., Y.F., X.L., J.J., Q.Z., and J.P. discussed the design, methods and results and helped writing and revising the manuscript.
Corresponding author
Correspondence to Chiyuan Miao.
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Chai, Y., Miao, C., AghaKouchak, A. et al. Flash droughts exacerbate global vegetation loss and delay recovery. Nat Commun (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-67173-x
Received: 22 November 2024
Accepted: 24 November 2025
Published: 08 December 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-67173-x