“…In Italy, the summers of 2003, 2017 and 2022 with exceptional temperatures which combined with persistent soil water deficits, resulted into extreme impacts on vegetation productivity (Faranda et al, 2023;Rita et al, 2020;Trucchia et al, 2022). The exceptional drought of the summer 2022, affecting central and south-eastern Europe, caused a reduction of the net biosphere uptake in summer between 56 and 62 TgC over the drought area (van der Woude et al, 2023). While different studies have investigated the role of water and heat stress on GEE in southern Europe (Ermitão et al, 2021;Gilabert et al, 2015;Gouveia et al, 2017;Rita et al, 2020), changes in the net ecosystem exchange remains highly uncertain due to manuscript submitted to Global Biogeochemical Cycles complex dependencies from heat and drought episodes on ecosystem respiration R ECO (Reichstein et al, 2013;von Buttlar et al, 2018).…”