This study aims to improve the uncertainty estimates of soil moisture datasets produced by merging various satellite products via inverse-variance weighting. In this scheme, the weight of each sensor depends on its specific uncertainty derived from Triple Collocation Analysis (TCA). However, the TCA-derived uncertainties are themselves uncertain due to finite sample sizes, introducing a second-order uncertainty we denote the ‘...

When quantifying changes over time in the natural environment, the stability of the observations used should be considered. Stability conceptually refers to how accurately true geophysical changes and trends are reflected in observational data. We argue the need for a better approach to defining and quantifying stability consistently across climate data records. We propose that the appropriate stability metric is the stability...

Monitoring drought helps to reduce their economic and environmental impacts by enabling early warnings and better resource management planning. In Europe, there are several operational monitoring systems operating at national and regional scales. However, such monitoring systems are rarely validated, which complicates the decision-making process. Therefore, we evaluated six national drought monitoring products in Central Europ...

Earth observation data should inform decision making, but good decisions can only be made if the uncertainties in the data are taken into account. Making sense of uncertainty information can be difficult, because uncertainties represent the statistical spread in the observations (e.g., expressed as $$x \pm y$$ x ± y ), which does not relate directly to one specific use case of the data. Here, we propose a Bayesian framework to...

As the Earth system is exposed to large anthropogenic interferences, it becomes ever more important to assess the resilience of natural systems, i.e., their ability to recover from natural and human-induced perturbations. Several, often related, measures of resilience have been proposed and applied to modeled and observed data, often by different scientific communities. Focusing on terrestrial ecosystems as a key component of...

The rising atmospheric CO 2 concentration leads to a CO 2 fertilization effect on plants—that is, increased photosynthetic uptake of CO 2 by leaves and enhanced water‐use efficiency (WUE). Yet, the resulting net impact of CO 2 fertilization on plant growth and soil moisture (SM) savings at large scale is poorly understood. Drylands provide a natural experimental setting to detect the CO 2 fertilization effect on plant growth s...

The Pannonian Basin in southeastern Europe is heavily used for rain-fed agriculture. The region experienced several droughts in the last years, causing major yield losses. Ongoing climate change, characterised by increasing temperatures and potential evapotranspiration, and by changes in precipitation distribution will likely increase the frequency and intensity of drought episodes in the future. Hence, ongoing monitoring of d...