Human actions compromise the many life-supporting functions provided by the freshwater cycle. Yet, scientific understanding of anthropogenic freshwater change and its long-term evolution is limited. Here, using a multi-model ensemble of global hydrological models, we estimate how, over a 145-year industrial period (1861–2005), streamflow and soil moisture have deviated from pre-industrial baseline conditions (defined by 5th–95th percentiles, at 0.5° grid level and monthly timestep over 1661–1860). Comparing the two periods, we find an increased frequency of local deviations on ~45% of land area, mainly in regions under heavy direct or indirect human pressures. To estimate humanity’s aggregate impact on these two important elements of the freshwater cycle, we present the evolution of deviation occurrence at regional to global scales. Annually, local streamflow and soil moisture deviations now occur on 18.2% and 15.8% of global land area, respectively, which is 8.0 and 4.7 percentage points beyond the ~3 percentage point wide pre-industrial variability envelope. Our results signify a substantial shift from pre-industrial streamflow and soil moisture reference conditions to persistently increasing change. This indicates a transgression of the new planetary boundary for freshwater change, which is defined and quantified using our approach, calling for urgent actions to reduce human disturbance of the freshwater cycle.@en

Root zone soil moisture is a key variable representing water cycle dynamics that strongly interact with ecohydrological, atmospheric, and biogeochemical processes. Recently, it was proposed as the control variable for the green water planetary boundary, suggesting that widespread and considerable deviations from baseline variability now predispose Earth system functions critical to an agriculture-based civilization to destabilization. However, the global extent and severity of root zone soil moisture changes under future scenarios remain to be scrutinized. Here, we analysed root zone soil moisture departures from the pre-industrial climate variability for a multi-model ensemble of 14 Earth system models (ESMs) in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) in four climate scenarios as defined by the shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) SSP1–2.6, SSP2–4.5, SSP3–7.0, and SSP5–8.5 between 2021 and 2100. The analyses were done for 43 ice-free climate reference regions used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). We defined “permanent departures” when a region's soil moisture exits the regional variability envelope of the pre-industrial climate and does not fall back into the range covered by the baseline envelope until 2100. Permanent dry departures (i.e. lower soil moisture than pre-industrial variability) were found to be most pronounced in Central America, southern Africa, the Mediterranean region, and most of South America, whereas permanent wet departures are most pronounced in south-eastern South America, northern Africa, and southern Asia. In the Mediterranean region, dry permanent departure may have already happened according to some models. By 2100, there are dry permanent departures in the Mediterranean in 70 % of the ESMs in SSP1–2.6, the most mitigated situation, and more than 90 % in SSP3–7.0 and SSP5–8.5, the medium–high and worst-case scenarios. North-eastern Africa is projected to experience wet permanent departures in 64 % of the ESMs under SSP1–2.6 and 93 % under SSP5–8.5. The percentage of ice-free land area with departures increases in all SSP scenarios as time goes by. Wet departures are more widespread than dry departures throughout the studied time frame, except in SSP1–2.6. In most regions, the severity of the departures increases with the severity of global warming. In 2050, permanent departures (ensemble median) occur in about 10 % of global ice-free land areas in SSP1–2.6 and in 25 % in SSP3–7.0. By the end of the 21st century, the occurrence of permanent departures in SSP1–2.6 increases to 34 % and, in SSP3–7.0, to 45 %. Our findings underscore the importance of mitigation to avoid further degrading the Earth system functions upheld by soil moisture.@en

Green water — terrestrial precipitation, evaporation and soil moisture — is fundamental to Earth system dynamics and is now extensively perturbed by human pressures at continental to planetary scales. However, green water lacks explicit consideration in the existing planetary boundaries framework that demarcates a global safe operating space for humanity. In this Perspective, we propose a green water planetary boundary and estimate its current status. The green water planetary boundary can be represented by the percentage of ice-free land area on which root-zone soil moisture deviates from Holocene variability for any month of the year. Provisional estimates of departures from Holocene-like conditions, alongside evidence of widespread deterioration in Earth system functioning, indicate that the green water planetary boundary is already transgressed. Moving forward, research needs to address and account for the role of root-zone soil moisture for Earth system resilience in view of ecohydrological, hydroclimatic and sociohydrological interactions.

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Several safe boundaries of critical Earth system processes have already been crossed due to human perturbations; not accounting for their interactions may further narrow the safe operating space for humanity. Using expert knowledge elicitation, we explored interactions among seven variables representing Earth system processes relevant to food production, identifying many interactions little explored in Earth system literature. We found that green water and land system change affect other Earth system processes strongly, while land, freshwater and ocean components of biosphere integrity are the most impacted by other Earth system processes, most notably blue water and biogeochemical flows. We also mapped a complex network of mechanisms mediating these interactions and created a future research prioritization scheme based on interaction strengths and existing knowledge gaps. Our study improves the understanding of Earth system interactions, with sustainability implications including improved Earth system modelling and more explicit biophysical limits for future food production.

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