Nitrogen addition causes changes in soil physicochemical properties and overall nutrient availability, and leads to alteration in the quantity and quality of litter input in forest and grassland ecosystems. The composition and function of microbial community also change under the influence of nitrogen addition, which in turn affect soil chemistry and nutrient cycling. However, the responses of soil physicochemical properties and microbial community composition to nitrogen addition may differ under different climatic and vegetation conditions. To better understand how climate affects the responses of soil properties and soil microbial traits to nitrogen deposition under natural vegetation globally, we compiled a dataset consisting of information from 137 published articles on nitrogen addition experiments at 188 study sites, and obtained a total of 530 paired data on absence vs. application of nitrogen addition treatments. To compare nitrogen addition effects among ecosystem types and climatic regions, we divided the database into different groups. First, data were categorized according to vegetation types as forests and grasslands. Next, three thermal climatic zones were identified and coded to data as tropical (23.4°S-23.4°N), subtropical (23.4°S-35°S or 23.4°N-35°N), and temperate (35°S-66 °S or 35°N-66 °N). Within each climatic zone, the data were further differentiated based on aridity index (AI) into humid (AI > 1), semi-humid (0.5≤AI < 1) and semi-arid (0.2 < AI≤0.5) categories. Some of the key variables for soil properties and soil microbial traits under contrasting vegetation types and climatic conditions were examined by means of meta-analysis. Our results show that globally nitrogen addition significantly decreased soil pH by 4.16%, total microbial biomass (totPLFA) by 5.05%, fungal biomass by 7.29%, and bacterial biomass by 7.92%, respectively, but increased soil organic carbon (SOC) by 4.63%, total nitrogen (TN) by 5.27%, and β-glucosidase (βG) activity by 8.2%, respectively. Nitrogen addition significantly increased SOC regardless of climatic conditions and ecosystem types, and increased TN in all regions except the tropic. Nitrogen addition led to a greater decrease in soil pH in grassland (7.96%) as well as in the temperate (6.41%) and semi-arid (9.07%) regions, indicating that the acidification resulting from nitrogen addition was more prominent in regions with higher initial soil pH. By ecosystem type and climatic conditions, nitrogen addition significantly decreased totPLFA, bacterial biomass, fungi biomass in the forest ecosystem (by 6.34%, 8.35%, and 7.79%, repectively), and in the tropical region (by 6.71%, 14.13%, and 9.44%, respectively) and the humid region (by 10.04%, 10.03%, and 10.47%, respectively), indicating the stronger effect of nitrogen addition in reducing soil microbial biomass in regions with higher precipitation. The effects of nitrogen addition on soil βG and N-acetyl-glucosaminidase (NAG) activity were not observed for forests and in the tropical and humid regions. Our results suggest that the responses of soil physicochemical properties and soil microbial traits to nitrogen addition are influenced by climate and vegetation factors, such that the magnitude of responses and the mechanisms underlying the responses of soil and microbial traits to nitrogen addition differ greatly among natural terrestrial ecosystems. Findings from this study contribute to better understanding on how soil biogeochemical cycling responds to global changes.