Check out our new blog post for a quick tour of the study. We put the results in a wider context, discuss what they mean for future projections, and show why rooting depth and plant-available water matter.

Contrary to our expectations, we found that the bias in water limitation is not directly linked to how models represent water storage. It traces back to simplified rooting depth, missing soil–plant hydraulics and fixed vegetation behaviour—areas we highlight for future model development.

I’m excited to share our new paper! We show that CMIP6 models overestimate the frequency of water limitation by roughly 14% globally and 26% in the tropics. The bias has direct consequences for drought, heat-wave and carbon-sink projections.