The pan-boreal lightning-ignited wildfire (BoLtFire) dataset spans the entire boreal forest from 2012 to 2022, focusing on fires of at least 200 ha. Developed using a new methodology to match lightning to wildfires in the boreal region, it includes 6902 fires – 4201 in Eurasia and 2701 in North America. BoLtFire provides new opportunities to model the ignition and spread dynamics of boreal wildfires and offers deeper insights into lightning-driven fire activity globally.

The Global Lakes and Wetlands Database (GLWD) version 2 distinguishes a total of 33 non-overlapping wetland classes, providing a static map of the world’s inland surface waters. It contains cell fractions of wetland extents per class at a grid cell resolution of ~500 m. The total combined extent of all classes including all inland and coastal waterbodies and wetlands of all inundation frequencies – that is, the maximum extent – covers 18.2 × 10⁶ km², equivalent to 13.4 % of total global land area.

Methane is a greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming, but we do not fully understand how much is released from natural sources like wetlands. To measure methane over large areas, many measurements are needed, often from small chambers that are placed on the ground. However, different researchers use different measurement setups, making it hard to combine data. We surveyed 36 researchers about their methods, summarized the responses, and identified ways to make the data more comparable.

Europe's forests are undergoing complex changes in response to increasing disturbances driven by climate and land use changes. Here, we present the European Forest Disturbance Atlas, a satellite-based approach for mapping annual forest disturbances across continental Europe from 1985 onwards. Maps provide insights into the year of disturbance occurrence, the actual frequency of disturbances, severity and the underlying causal agent, thus contributing to a future monitoring system envisioned for Europe.

This study addresses the challenge of how clouds affect the Earth's energy balance, which is vital for understanding climate change. We developed a new method to create long-term cloud radiative kernels to improve the accuracy of measurements of sunlight reaching the surface, which significantly reduces errors. Findings suggest that prior estimates of cloud cooling effects may have been overstated, emphasizing the need for better strategies to manage climate change impacts in the Arctic.

Ozone (discovered in 1837) was first measured in 1847 using paper strips that reacted with ozone, providing an indication of its concentration based on colour changes. Here, we present the data, covering over 60 years of daily observations conducted along the eastern Atlantic coast, spanning from the tropics to the northern extratropics.

Detecting and predicting change in the structure and functioning of marine food webs is a priority for Earth system science. We collated fish stomach content data to improve understanding of feeding interactions for the North Atlantic and Arctic oceans. To illustrate how these data can be used, we estimate species- and size-specific feeding traits, classify predators into functional feeding groups, and reveal spatially extensive temporal change in marine ecosystem structure and functioning. 

We developed a high-quality and cost-effective shallow-water depth model for >120 islands in the South China Sea, using ICESat-2 and Sentinel-2 satellite data. This model maps water depths with an accuracy of ~1 m. Our findings highlight the limitations of existing global bathymetry models in shallow regions. Our model exhibited superior performance in capturing fine-scale bathymetric features with unprecedented spatial resolution, providing essential data for marine applications.

This study established a four-dimensional (hourly; 0.03° × 0.03° × 34 height layers) aircraft emission inventory dataset in the landing-and-takeoff cycle for China during 2019–2023 considering actual running time and flight trajectory. The dataset reflects unique horizontal and height spatial characteristics and hourly temporal variations of aircraft emissions and the impact of COVID-19 on these emissions, providing essential information for environmental analysis and policy decisions.

We present daily methane (CH₄) fluxes of northern wetlands at 10 km resolution during 2016–2022 (WetCH₄) derived from a novel machine learning framework. We estimated an average annual CH₄ emission of 22.8 ± 2.4 Tg CH₄ yr⁻¹ (15.7–51.6 Tg CH₄ yr⁻¹). Emissions were intensified in 2016, 2020, and 2022, with the largest interannual variation coming from Western Siberia. Continued, all-season tower observations and improved soil moisture products are needed for future improvement of CH₄ upscaling.

The currently available urban canopy parameter (UCP) datasets are limited to just a few cities for urban climate simulations by the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. To address this gap, we develop a global 1 km spatially continuous UCP dataset (GloUCP) which provides superior spatial coverage and higher accuracy in capturing urban morphology across diverse regions. It has great potential to support further advancements in urban climate modeling and related applications.

We present a meta-dataset of greenhouse gas observations in the Arctic and boreal regions, including information on sites where greenhouse gases have been measured using different measurement techniques. We provide a novel repository of metadata to facilitate synthesis efforts for regions undergoing rapid environmental change. The meta-dataset shows where measurements are missing and will be updated as new measurements are published.

Optimal features among hydroclimatic variables and land surface model (LSM) outputs are selected using a novel Bayesian network (BN) approach for simulating terrestrial water storage anomalies (TWSAs). TWSAs are reconstructed (BNML_TWSA) with grid-specific leader models (among four machine learning models) from January 1960 to December 2022 to generate a continuous global gridded dataset. The uncertainty in the reconstructed BNML_TWSA product is also assessed in terms of standard error.