Nature – Liu et al. (2025): Hysteresis and reversibility of agroecological droughts in response to carbon dioxide removal
Laibao Liu, Mathias Hauser, Michael Windisch and Sonia I. Seneviratne, IN: Nature Water, https://www.nature.com/articles/s44221-025-00487-8
Agroecological droughts are expected to increase with climate change, becoming one of the greatest threats to ecosystems and human society. To mitigate climate change and the growing risk of agroecological droughts, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is increasingly recognized as unavoidable. However, it remains unclear whether the increase of agroecological drought due to atmospheric CO₂ emissions will be symmetrically reversed by an equivalent atmospheric CDR. Here the authors investigate this question by utilizing an idealized atmospheric CO₂ emission and removal experiment from the CDR Model Intercomparison Project, involving eight Earth system models, and develop a new methodology to quantify climate hysteresis and reversibility.