Abstract. Earth experienced dramatic environmental changes in the recent 15 years (2000–2014). The past decade has been the warmest in the instrumental record, which significantly influences the global water cycle and vegetation activities. Overall, the global inter-annual series of net primary production (NPP) slightly increased in 2000–2014 at a rate of 0.06 PgC/yr2. More than 64 % of vegetated land in the Northern Hemisphere showed increased net primary production, while 60.3 % of vegetated land in the Southern Hemisphere showed decreased trend. Net primary production correlates positively with land actual evapotranspiration (ET), especially in the Northern Hemisphere, where the increased vegetation productivity (0.13 PgC/yr2) promotes decadal rises of terrestrial evapotranspiration (0.61 mm/yr2). However, anomalous dry conditions led to reduced vegetation productivity (−0.18 PgC/yr2) and nearly ceased growth in terrestrial evapotranspiration in the Southern Hemisphere (0.41 mm/yr2). Under the content of past warmest 15 years, global potential evapotranspiration (PET) shows an increasing trend of 1.72 mm/yr2, while precipitation for the domain shows a variability positive trend of 0.84 mm/yr2, which consistent with expected water cycle intensification. But precipitation trend is lower than evaporative demand, indicating some moisture deficit between available water demand and supply for evapotranspiration, thereby accelerated soil moisture loss. Drought indices and precipitation-minus-evaporation suggested an increased risk of drought in the present century. To understand why climates in the northern and southern hemispheres respond differently to NPP, the results showed that temperature is the dominant control on vegetation growth in the high latitude in the Northern Hemisphere, while net radiation is the main effect factors to NPP in the mid latitude, and in arid and semi-arid biomes also mainly driven by precipitation. While in the Southern Hemisphere, NPP decreased because of warming associated drying trends of PDSI.