Vegetation changes play a vital role in modifying local temperatures although, until now, the climate feedback effects of vegetation changes are still poorly known and large uncertainties exist, especially over Central Asia. In this study, using remote sensing and re-analysis of existing data, we evaluated the impact of vegetation changes on local temperatures. Our results indicate that vegetation changes have a significant unidirectional causality relationship with regard to local temperature changes. We found that vegetation greening over Central Asia as a whole induced a cooling effect on the local temperatures. We also found that evapotranspiration (ET) exhibits greater sensitivity to the increases of the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) as compared to albedo in arid/semi-arid/semihumid regions, potentially leading to a cooling effect. However, in humid regions, albedo warming completely surpasses ET cooling, causing a pronounced warming. Our findings suggest that using appropriate strategies to protect vulnerable dryland ecosystems from degradation, should lead to future benefits related to greening ecosystems and mitigation for rising temperatures.Recent studies indicate that the Earth is experiencing a profound greening trend as a result of elevated CO 2 fertilization, climate change and land cover change 1, 2 . Coincident with vegetation greening, evapotranspiration (ET) has been increasing over the past three decades at a rate of ~0.88 mm year −1, and more than half of the solar energy absorbed by land surfaces has been dissipated 3, 4 . Today, the Northern Hemisphere would be 15-25 °C warmer if the terrestrial ET was zero 5 , implying that an increase in ET associated with vegetation greening has a strong influence on locally cooling temperatures. In contrast, vegetation greening can also warm local temperatures by reducing albedo 6 . Since the presence of forests can warm local temperatures by 12 °C in April and by 5 °C in July in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions, the climate effects of these albedo changes are substantial 7 . Therefore, understanding the feedbacks of vegetation changes and their capacity to influence local temperatures is helpful to further identify global warming and the development of appropriate strategies required to protect ecosystems.The potential effects of vegetation changes on local temperatures due to alterations in energy storage and transfer have been investigated for a long period of time. Research obtained from the afforestation programme in northern China indicates that increases in vegetation coverage have a cooling effect and that the range of the identified temperatures could possibly be mediated based on the Granger causality test 8 . Another study indicates that due to increased nighttime temperatures, in relation to decreased daytime temperatures, afforestation in China has resulted in a net warming within the arid and semiarid regions 9 . Agricultural practices can also have an influence on temperatures. A recent study suggested that agricultural inten...

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