ESSD cover
Chief editors: Kirsten Elger, Sibylle K. Hassler, Conrad Jackisch, Graciela Raga, François G. Schmitt, Hanqin Tian, Baptiste Vandecrux & Yuyu Zhou
eISSN: ESSD 1866-3516, ESSDD 1866-3591

Earth System Science Data (ESSD) is an international, interdisciplinary journal for the publication of articles on original research data (sets), furthering the reuse of high-quality data of benefit to Earth system sciences. The editors encourage submissions on original data or data collections which are of sufficient quality and have potential to contribute to these aims. The journal maintains sections for regular-length articles, brief communications (e.g. on additions to data sets) and commentaries, as well as review articles and special issues.

This short commentary draws on ESSD author, reviewer and editor experiences over its first 10 years of operation to define guidelines, requirements and benefits of the ESSD processes.

News

07 May 2026 Temporary unavailability of article and preprint PDFs due to technical issues

Since Tuesday, 5 May, 06:30 CET, we have been experiencing technical issues caused by high demand on our systems, which have significantly affected our journal libraries. To maintain platform stability and ensure continued access to critical services, all preprint and journal article PDFs were temporarily restricted, while HTML full-text content and XML files remained available. Since Thursday, 7 May, 08:30 CET, we have made the preprint PDFs available again; however, journal article PDFs remain restricted until the technical issues have been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we work to restore full PDF access as quickly as possible. Thank you for your understanding.

07 May 2026 Temporary unavailability of article and preprint PDFs due to technical issues

Since Tuesday, 5 May, 06:30 CET, we have been experiencing technical issues caused by high demand on our systems, which have significantly affected our journal libraries. To maintain platform stability and ensure continued access to critical services, all preprint and journal article PDFs were temporarily restricted, while HTML full-text content and XML files remained available. Since Thursday, 7 May, 08:30 CET, we have made the preprint PDFs available again; however, journal article PDFs remain restricted until the technical issues have been resolved. We apologize for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience as we work to restore full PDF access as quickly as possible. Thank you for your understanding.

02 Apr 2026 Australia's terrestrial industrial footprint and ecological intactness

The authors developed two datasets representing human industrial pressures and ecological intactness across Australia's landscapes. These datasets fill a long-standing gap in national-scale pressure mapping, providing key insights into human disturbance of the environment. Please read more.

02 Apr 2026 Australia's terrestrial industrial footprint and ecological intactness

The authors developed two datasets representing human industrial pressures and ecological intactness across Australia's landscapes. These datasets fill a long-standing gap in national-scale pressure mapping, providing key insights into human disturbance of the environment. Please read more.

13 Feb 2026 University of Western Ontario partners with Copernicus Publications to support open-access publishing

Copernicus Publications has signed a new agreement with Western Libraries at the University of Western Ontario, providing a 50% APC reduction for eligible corresponding authors submitting from 1 January 2026. Please read more.

13 Feb 2026 University of Western Ontario partners with Copernicus Publications to support open-access publishing

Copernicus Publications has signed a new agreement with Western Libraries at the University of Western Ontario, providing a 50% APC reduction for eligible corresponding authors submitting from 1 January 2026. Please read more.

Highlight articles

22 May 2026
Machine-learning-based estimates of global natural vegetated wetland methane emissions (2000–2025)
Mengze Li, Robert B. Jackson, Marielle Saunois, Philippe Ciais, Ben Poulter, Josep G. Canadell, Prabir K. Patra, Hanqin Tian, Zhen Zhang, Etienne Fluet-Chouinard, Zutao Ouyang, Ting Zhang, David J. Beerling, Dmitry A. Belikov, Philippe Bousquet, Danilo Custodio, Naveen Chandra, Xinyu Dou, Nicola Gedney, Peter O. Hopcroft, Alison M. Hoyt, Kazuhito Ichii, Akihito Ito, Atul K. Jain, Katherine Jensen, Fortunat Joos, Thomas Kleinen, Masayuki Kondo, Fa Li, Tingting Li, Xiangyu Liu, Shamil Maksyutov, Avni Malhotra, Adrien Martinez, Kyle McDonald, Joe R. Melton, Jurek Müller, Yosuke Niwa, Shufen Pan, Shushi Peng, Changhui Peng, Zhangcai Qin, Peter Raymond, William Riley, Arjo Segers, Rona L. Thompson, Aki Tsuruta, Yi Xi, Kunxiaojia Yuan, Wenxin Zhang, Bo Zheng, Qing Zhu, Qiuan Zhu, and Qianlai Zhuang
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 18, 3507–3524, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-3507-2026,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-3507-2026, 2026
Short summary Editorial statement
29 Apr 2026
Creation and analysis of a multi-hazard dataset: Tenerife (Canary Islands) as a case study
Marta López-Saavedra, Joan Martí, and Marc Martínez-Sepúlveda
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 18, 2979–2998, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-2979-2026,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-2979-2026, 2026
Short summary Editorial statement

Recent papers

01 Jun 2026
OneDZ: a global detrital zircon database and implications for constructing giant geoscience database
Keran Li, Xiumian Hu, Rong Chai, Jianghai Yang, Weiwei Xue, Yingdi Pan, Taiyang Li, Can Fang, Anlin Ma, Hu Huang, Qianqian Guo, Wentao Yang, Lisha Hu, Liang Qi, Guohui Chen, Gaoyuan Sun, Shijie Zhang, Tao Deng, Kuizhou Li, Jiaopeng Sun, and Biao Gao
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 18, 3671–3696, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-3671-2026,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-3671-2026, 2026
Short summary
01 Jun 2026
Two biogenic volatile organic compound emission datasets over Europe based on land surface modelling and satellite data assimilation
Paul D. Hamer, Miha Markelj, Oscar Rojas-Munoz, Bertrand Bonan, Jean-Christophe Calvet, Virginie Marécal, Alex Guenther, Heidi Trimmel, Islen Vallejo, Sabine Eckhardt, Gabriela Sousa Santos, Katerina Sindelarova, David Simpson, Norbert Schmidbauer, Heidi Hellén, Pascal Rubli, Stefan Reimann, Anja Claude, Dagmar Kubistin, Julie Cozic, James Dernie, and Leonor Tarrasón
Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 18, 3635–3669, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-3635-2026,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-18-3635-2026, 2026
Short summary
01 Jun 2026
The Global TanDEM-X High-Resolution Coastline Product
Leena Julia Warmedinger, Carolin Keller, Larissa Gorzawski, Achim Roth, Bernhard Lehner, Martin Huber, Ursula Marschalk, and Birgit Wessel
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2026-277,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2026-277, 2026
Preprint under review for ESSD (discussion: open, 0 comments)
Short summary
01 Jun 2026
Mapping 20-years winter wheat dynamics in global primary planting areas using Gaussian mixture models with adaptive thresholds
Yanan Wen, Tuo Chen, Xuecao Li, Tiecheng Bai, Ke Yao, Liheng Zhong, Han Chen, Meiling Liu, Xieqin Huang, Shunlin Liang, Shuangxi Miao, and Jianxi Huang
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2026-347,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2026-347, 2026
Preprint under review for ESSD (discussion: open, 0 comments)
Short summary
29 May 2026
SISAL_monv1: a global database of cave monitoring observations
Pauline C. Treble, Yining Zang, Nikita Kaushal, István G. Hatvani, Péter Tanos, Zoltan Kern, Andy Baker, Andreas Hartmann, Franziska A. Lechleitner, Bryce Belanger, Bruna Daudt de Oliveira, Will Sinclair, Dana F. C. Riechelmann, András Hidas, Kei Yoshimura, Laia Comas-Bru, and the SISAL working group members
Earth Syst. Sci. Data Discuss., https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2026-31,https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-2026-31, 2026
Preprint under review for ESSD (discussion: open, 0 comments)
Short summary

Notice on APC invoices

In accordance with current European restrictions, Copernicus Publications does not step into business relations with and issue APC invoices (articles processing charges) to Russian and Belarusian institutions. The peer-review process and scientific exchange of our journals including preprint posting is not affected. However, these restrictions require that the first contact (contractual partner of Copernicus) has an affiliation and invoice address outside Russia or Belarus.