The animation below shows the mean seasonal cycle (moving 30-day window) of global land-atmosphere coupling, estimated from a blend of three reanalyses each covering about 3 decades, and two metrics; one measuring the terrestrial leg and one the atmospheric leg of feedback from land to atmosphere. Green shaded areas show where the link between soil moisture and evaporation is strong, but the atmosphere does not convey the signal from surface fluxes to boundary layer development. Blue areas show the opposite, where the atmospheric link in the feedback loop is in place but the land surface does not convey soil moisture anomalies into surface flux anomalies. Red regions have complete linkage and denote "hot spots" of land-atmosheric coupling, which grow, shrink and migrate during the year.