A dangerous trend

Climatology How anthropogenically driven climate change is affecting heat waves and drought is one of the most important environmental issues facing societies around the globe. Zhang et al. present a 260-year-long record of temperature and soil moisture over inner East Asia that reveals an abrupt shift to hotter and drier conditions (see the Perspective by Zhang and Fang). Extreme episodes of hotter and drier climate over the past 20 years, which are unprecedented in the earlier records, are caused by a positive feedback loop between soil moisture deficits and surface warming and potentially represent the start of an irreversible trend. Science , this issue p. [1095][1]; see also p. [1037][2] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.abb3368 [2]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.abf1700