Nature Geoscience: Western Eurasian steppe abruptly turned hotter and drier

The climate of the Western Eurasian steppe has shifted abruptly, according to a new study. Summers there have dried to a degree that exceeds natural variability over the past century, a team led by Jinling Piao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of Atmospheric Physics and Seoul National University reported in Nature Geoscience, published online Oct. 12. The corresponding authors are Jong-Seong Kug of Seoul and Wen Chen of Yunnan University (DOI: 10.1038/s41561-026-02125-8). The study covered the area between 40 and 55 degrees north and 30 and 65 degrees east, roughly from the Black Sea region to Central Asia.

The analysis rests on observations from 1901 to 2024, including weather station, reanalysis and satellite soil moisture data. A statistical method detects the regime shift in 2006, with the strongest drying between 2004 and 2010. The researchers see no sign of recovery during the observation period. To separate causes, they compared the data with large model ensembles, including 100 runs of the Max Planck Institute's MPI-GE model. They found that external forcing, which includes human-made greenhouse gases, set the drying trend, while natural climate variability amplified it from the early 1990s.

A feedback adds to this: as soils dry out, less water evaporates to cool the surface. Instead the air heats up more, and heat extremes and water shortages intensify. The authors link this to land degradation, such as grassland turning to barren ground, and to lower plant productivity. They explicitly do not call the change a tipping point or irreversible, describing it instead as a persistent regime shift. The study text gives no specific warming figures; its statistical tests use a 95% confidence level.