Greening vegetation alleviates hot extremes in the semiarid region of China

China has shown a world-leading vegetation greening trend since 2000, which may exert biophysical effects on near-surface air temperature (SAT). However, such effects remain largely unknown because prior studies either focus on land surface temperature, which differs from SAT, or rely on simulations, which are limited by model uncertainties. As a widely used metric in climate and extremes research, SAT is more relevant to human health and terrestrial ecosystem functions. Therefore, it is necessary to explore impacts of greening on SAT and extremes based on observations. Here, we investigate the greening effects on SAT and subsequent extremes over 2003–2014 in China based on high-resolution SAT observations combined with satellite datasets. We find that greening can cause cooling effects on the mean SAT and more pronounced cooling effects on SAT extremes over semiarid regions. Such cooling effects are attributed to enhanced evapotranspiration caused by greening and strong coupling between evapotranspiration and SAT in semiarid regions. Semiarid regions in China are the transitional zone of both climate and ecosystem and deeply influenced by human agricultural and pastoral activities. These factors make the ecosystem of these regions fragile and extremely vulnerable to climate change. Our results reveal a considerable climate benefit of greening to natural and human systems in semiarid regions, and have significant implications for on-going revegetation programs implemented in these regions of China.