Tuesday, September 15, 2026

Greening in China and India reshapes climate both locally and far away

Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

China and India Lead the Way in Greening — image:
China and India—the world's most populous countries—are leading the increase in greening on land.
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Credit: NASA Earth Observatory images by Joshua Stevens, using data courtesy of Chen et al., (2019). [Chen et al. (2019) China and India lead in greening of the world through land-use management. Nature Sustainability, (2) 122-129.]

China and India are getting greener during recent decade. Together, the two regions account for nearly one-third of the global increase in leaf area. The two regions lie in different climate regimes. Does greening in these two regions produce similar climate effects? And how different are the simultaneous greening produce compared to their individual greening?

A new study published in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences tried to explore these problems using a land-atmosphere climate model. Their results show that greening in China generally cools the local climate with more rainfall over southern and northeastern China, while greening in India tends to produce warming and less rainfall. The Co-occurring greening in China and India yields uniform climate feedbacks across over half global lands, producing cooler and wetter southern China, cooler western Eurasia, and warmer northern North America.

“Greening does not necessarily produce the same climate response everywhere,” said corresponding author Miao Yu, Professor at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology. “What matters is not only how much water vegetation releases into the atmosphere, but also where that moisture goes and how it changes clouds and surface heating.”

In China, increased vegetation enhances the transfer of water from the land to the atmosphere. Over southern China, more moisture favors cloud formation. The additional clouds reduce the energy reaching the surface, helping cool the air while also supporting more rainfall.

India follows a different pathway. Although vegetation also releases more moisture there, much of it is transported away instead of forming clouds and rain locally. With fewer clouds and more energy reaching the surface, temperatures rise and rainfall decreases.

The researchers found an even more intriguing response when China and India green simultaneously. Southern China becomes more consistently cooler and wetter, while western Eurasia experiences cooling. These effects arise because vegetation changes alter not only local energy and moisture, but also large-scale atmospheric circulation.

Changes in atmospheric heating can reshape winds high above the surface and influence large atmospheric waves that carry climate signals across continents. In the simulations, simultaneous greening changed the East Asian and Central Asian jet streams and favored the movement of colder polar air toward Eurasia.

“The atmosphere connects regions that may appear far apart,” said lead author Min Xiao, a graduate student working with Prof. Miao Yu at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology. “Vegetation change in one region can reinforce, weaken, or even reverse the climate effects caused by vegetation change elsewhere.”This means that simultaneous greening is not simply the sum of two independent effects. Moisture transport, cloud feedbacks and atmospheric circulation can interact in nonlinear ways, producing climate responses that differ from those expected from either region alone.

The findings highlight a broader lesson for large-scale ecological restoration and land management. Greening can influence more than carbon storage or the climate directly above the restored land. Its effects can travel through the atmosphere and reshape climate far beyond the original greening region. The authors note that the study relies mainly on one land-atmosphere model, so further studies using multiple models will be important for testing the remote climate responses.

DOI

10.1007/s00376-026-6125-2

Article Title

Climate Responses to Vegetation Greening in China and India and Their Combined Effects

Article Publication Date

12-Sep-2026

Greening in China and India reshapes climate both locally and far away

Greening in China and India can reshape climate far beyond where vegetation changes.

Credit

Miao Yu

Abortion care and counseling is core to the practice of maternal-fetal medicine, says new SMFM guidance

Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine

Washington, DC – Maternal-fetal medicine subspecialists (MFMs) should use their expertise to improve maternal safety by maximizing patient access to the full range of reproductive healthcare under current state abortion restrictions, according to the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM). Providing abortion care and counseling is central to MFM clinical practice and cannot be separated from high-risk pregnancy care, according to SMFM.

SMFM Special Statement: Considerations for management of high-risk pregnancies when abortion care is restricted, published in PREGNANCY, addresses actions that MFMs and institutions can take to build consensus and create systems and processes that ensure patients receive optimal, evidence-based reproductive healthcare, including abortion care, particularly in states where abortion is restricted. The new statement, endorsed by the Society of Family Planning, addresses patient counseling, patient transfer and referrals, institutional collaboration, and Ob-Gyn residency and MFM fellowship training.

After the 2022 Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, many states increased abortion restrictions. These restrictions are forcing more patients to travel out of state for abortion care and have created confusion and uncertainty among physicians and institutions in high-risk pregnancy situations.

“As high-risk pregnancy physicians, we know first-hand that restrictions on abortion care hinder our ability to provide compassionate, evidence-based healthcare for our patients,” said Justin R. Lappen, MD, chair of the SMFM Reproductive Health Committee. “This new guidance helps MFMs use their expertise, experience, and leadership to build reliable and collaborative systems so that pregnant patients receive the very best care without unnecessary delay.”

SMFM recommends that all patients with an increased risk of medical complications during pregnancy should be provided with accurate, evidence-based information about the health risks and all treatment options and their availability, including abortion care. In addition, providing accurate, unbiased, evidence-based counseling about treatment and prognosis is critical for pregnant patients with a fetal anomaly diagnosis, and all patients should have the option of abortion care.

Organizing interdisciplinary discussions among institutional, community, regional, and state-level stakeholders to achieve consensus on legal interpretation of abortion restrictions can minimize uncertainty about legally permissible healthcare in medical emergencies or legal ‘grey zones’ in abortion-restrictive states, according to SMFM.

“Collaborative partnerships with institutions and clinics in surrounding states that provide abortion care should be developed so that patients can be quickly and safely transferred for care,” said Lappen. MFMs should also be aware of existing resources, such as hotlines, abortion funds, and practical support networks that provide funding and travel support for patients.

Abortion care is difficult to access for many in the US because of judicial, legislative, and institutional barriers. Although existing data show the harm created by these abortion restrictions, more research is needed on their impact, including patient outcomes with severe obstetrical complications, data on maternal morbidity and mortality and fetal and infant mortality, training goals and competencies for MFM fellows, and patient volume and transport to states without restrictions.

# # #

About SMFM
The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM), founded in 1977, is the medical professional society for obstetricians who have additional training in high-risk, complicated pregnancies. SMFM represents more than 6,500 members who care for high-risk pregnant people and provides education, promotes research, and engages in advocacy to reduce disparities and optimize the health of high-risk pregnant people and their families. SMFM and its members are dedicated to optimizing maternal and fetal outcomes and assuring medically appropriate treatment options are available to all patients.

Journal

Pregnancy

DOI

10.1002/pmf2.70376

Article Title

SMFM Special Statement: Considerations for management of high-risk pregnancies when abortion care is restricted

Article Publication Date

15-Sep-2026

Robots and AI find a hidden reaction inside 135-year-old chemistry

Systematic exploration of the classic Biginelli reaction reveals a previously unknown pathway to complex molecules with self-assembly properties

Institute for Basic Science

Figure 1. Idea behind the project in a snapshot — image:
A systematic scan across reaction hyperspace using a robotic platform leds to the discovery of unexpected reactivity and complex bicyclic product from simple substrates. The result from the robotic campaign inspires the synthesis of a new scaffold.
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Credit: Institute for Basic Science

Chemical reactions are often written as simple equations: starting materials go in, and a product comes out. In reality, the samesubstrates can follow many different pathways depending on their concentrations, temperature, catalysts, and other conditions.

Exploring all of these possibilities by hand is practically impossible. Now, advances in laboratory automation and chemical artificial intelligence are allowing researchers to systematically map this vast “reaction hyperspace”—and uncover chemistry that may have remained hidden even in reactions studied for more than a century.

To address this question, scientists led by Prof. Bartosz A. GRZYBOWSKI, Director of the Center for Algorithmic and Robotized Synthesis within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) used an automated robotic platform to explore 960 different sets of conditions for the Biginelli reaction, a classic multicomponent reaction first reported in 1891.

Instead of searching for the best conditions to produce a known molecule, the researchers set out to identify the different products and reaction pathways that could emerge across the entire reaction space. Their search uncovered a previously unknown branch of the Biginelli reaction that produces complex bicyclic structures unlike its conventional products.

Mechanistic analysis supported by chemical AI revealed that the unexpected pathway corresponds to a pseudo-seven-component transformation, in which seven molecules of the starting components ultimately contribute to the formation of one complex product. Guided by this newly reconstructed reaction network, the researchers then redesigned the synthesis and produced a family of related molecules, including structures approaching the architectural complexity of some natural products.

The newly discovered molecules were notable not only for their structural complexity, but also for their unusual supramolecular behavior.

Some of the compounds spontaneously assembled into larger structures in ways that depended on concentration and temperature. Others selectively bound metal ions, particularly barium and zinc, suggesting potential applications in selective metal sensing.

One compound showed an especially unusual form of chiral self-sorting. Molecules can exist as mirror-image forms known as enantiomers, and these forms do not always interact in the same way. In the absence of metal ions, the compound showed different preferences for assembling with molecules of the same or opposite handedness depending on whether it was examined in the solid state or in solution.

The behavior could also be controlled by the identity of the metal ion. In the presence of zinc ions, molecules with the same chirality preferentially associated with one another, while barium ions favored assembly between opposite enantiomers. Metal-programmable chiral sorting of this kind is extremely rare and could be useful in areas such as enantioselective sensing, responsive materials, and molecular recognition.

The broader significance of the work lies in how the reaction was discovered. Conventional automated chemistry is often used to optimize the yield of a predetermined product. Here, the robotic platform was instead used to map the reaction network itself, allowing unexpected products and pathways to emerge from regions of chemical space that would normally remain unexplored.

The researchers argue that this “hyperspace” approach could transform chemical automation from a tool for speeding up experiments into a platform for discovering entirely new chemistry. Even reactions that have been studied for more than a century may still contain hidden pathways that become visible only when their conditions are explored systematically.

The study demonstrates that combining robotic experimentation, large-scale reaction mapping, and chemical AI can reveal not only new reaction mechanisms, but also structurally complex molecules with unexpected functional properties.

This study was published in Nature Synthesis.

Journal

Nature Synthesis

DOI

10.1038/s44160-026-01096-3

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Hyperspace exploration using robotics for the discovery of mechanistically distinct transformations and complex functional products

Each cube is a ‘slice’ of a four-dimensional space at a fixed concentration of a catalyst (camphorsulfonic acid). Colour gradients quantify product yields.

Credit

Institute for Basic Science

The route to 8a, indicated with green arrows, was proposed with the help of mechanistic-level chemical AI.

Credit

Institute for Basic Science

How a pathogen turns flowers into leaves

European Synchrotron Radiation Facility

Scientists have found how a protein produced by bacteria disrupts the mechanism that controls flower development in plants, turning reproductive organs into leaf-like structures. These findings shed light on a plant disease that is expected to spread as climate change expands the range of its insect vectors in northern latitudes. They used synchrotron technique at the ESRF, the European Synchrotron in Grenoble, France. The results are the Editor’s Pick in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

Phytoplasmas are bacteria that are transmitted to plants by insects. The symptoms of the pathogen can range from triggering dwarfism in the plant to essentially reprogramming plant development: instead of flowers, all the floral organs- sepals, petals, stamen and carpels- are converted to leaves, with diverse crops such as sunflowers, sesame and grapevine affected.

This effect can have economic consequences, as food might not be as easily available in damaged crops. For example, outbreaks of phytoplasma coconut lethal yellowing disease in Africa since the 1930s has led to devastating crop losses up to 40% in Tanzania and 20% in Ghana. In addition, climate change has increased the presence of insects in more northern latitudes, which increases the presence of phytoplasmas. “Understanding how the insects hijack the plant’s own developmental machinery could help us find strategies to hopefully mitigate their impact on agriculture”, explains Chloe Zubieta, CEA researcher at Laboratoire de Physiologie Cellulaire et Végétale, ESRF visiting scientist and leader of the study.

Zubieta joined forces with ESRF scientists Mark Tully and Max Nanao to study a phytoplasma protein called PHYLOY (phyllogen protein from Candidatus Phytoplasma asteris, onion yellows strain), which interferes with the plant’s normal development. It does this by targeting plant proteins called MADS-box transcription factors (MTFs).

MTFs play an important role in deciding how a flower develops. They work together in groups of four, binding to DNA and switching on the genes that tell the plant which parts of the flower to produce.

The researchers used a synchrotron technique called Small X-ray scattering (SAXS) on ESRF’s beamline BM29 to study how PHYLOY interacts with three important MTFs. Their experiments showed that PHYLOY can interact with a wider range of MTF combinations than previously thought. “We can observe flexibility in the data and we think this corresponds to the interaction plasticity of phyllogen and host plant transcription factors,” notes Mark Tully, ESRF scientist at BM29.

The researchers then changed individual parts of these proteins using a technique called site directed mutagenesis and found that they could either prevent or enable the interactions. This showed that PHYLOY recognises specific features shared by different MTFs, allowing the pathogen to interfere with the plant’s developmental machinery by structural mimicry.

By preventing MTF proteins from working together properly, the phytoplasma protein changes the identity of floral organs, causing them to develop into leaf-like structures.

“We are working on obtaining the high-resolution crystal structure of the MTF-PHYLOY complex and hope to use these data, in combination with high throughput virtual screening, to design inhibitors of this interaction,” comments Max Nanao, ESRF scientist.

Structure of the phytoplasma protein PHYLOY

The scientists used the ESRF to study a phytoplasma protein called PHYLOY, which interferes with the plant’s normal development.

Credit

Journal of Biological Chemistry

The scientists used the ESRF to demonstrate how a pathogen turns flowers into leaves - Here Chloe Zubieta, CEA, during the experiment at the ESRF's beamline BM29.

Credit

ESRF

Journal

Journal of Biological Chemistry

DOI

10.1016/j.jbc.2026.113449

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

The phytoplasma effector, phyllogen, structurally mimics host plant MADS transcription factors

Great Salt Lake’s ancient past reveals how quickly fresh water can disappear

Research led by USC Dornsife Earth scientists traces 240,000 years of change, showing that vast freshwater lakes were fleeting as warming and drying reshaped the basin.

University of Southern California

Key findings:

USC Dornsife researchers studying the history of Utah’s Great Salt Lake identified two brief, deep-lake phases when the water was much fresher than now.
Their analysis of core samples spanning the past 240,000 years shows that the most recent freshwater phase, which formed Lake Bonneville, lasted longer and was fresher than the earlier Little Valley lake phase.
The researchers found that both lakes shrank and became salty as the regional climate warmed and dried, offering possible insights into Great Salt Lake’s future in the face of climate change.

From a mountainside overlooking Utah’s Great Salt Lake, a time traveler turning back the clock 20,000 years would watch a dramatic transformation of the landscape.

The shallow, salty lake below would swell into an immense body of fresh water, at one point reaching nearly 1,000 feet deep and covering more than 10 times the lake’s modern area. Mountain ranges would become islands, and the new shoreline would move far beyond its current boundary.

Travel back 120,000 more years and another giant lake would appear.

A new study led by researchers at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and published in Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology, traces those transformations through sediments buried beneath Great Salt Lake. The scientists reconstructed nearly 240,000 years of lake history and found that the enormous lakes were brief departures from its usual hypersaline (extremely salty) state.

Both giant lakes appear to have followed the same pattern: As the climate warmed and dried, the water receded, salinity rose and salt deposits formed on the lakebed, although the scientists note the timing of the older transition is less precise.

Corresponding author Rachel So, a recent PhD graduate from Earth sciences at USC Dornsife, compares the record to watching a puddle that remains nearly the same size for an hour, briefly swells into a pond and then shrinks again. “If you scaled this up to the size of the present Great Salt Lake, that’s probably what it looked like,” she says. “For most of the past 240,000 years, the lake stayed about the same size but briefly grew 10 times larger on two separate occasions.”

Ancient sediments reveal a lake transformed

Scientists have long known that Lake Bonneville once covered much of western Utah during the last ice age. Its ancient shorelines remain visible across the landscape. But those shorelines provide snapshots, not a continuous account of the lake’s size and salinity change over time.

For that, the researchers turned to a nearly 400-foot sediment core drilled from Great Salt Lake’s bed in 2000. Its layers preserve a record stretching back about 236,000 years.

The team dated the sediment layers by measuring radioactive decay in minerals, which provides a kind of geological clock. The researchers also analyzed molecules left by microorganisms that once lived in the lake. Because the relative abundance of those molecules changes with salinity, they could broadly gauge whether the water was fresh, brackish or extremely salty.

The record shows two major interruptions in the lake’s long hypersaline history. From roughly 30,000 to 16,000 years ago, it expanded to become Lake Bonneville. And Little Valley, an earlier deep lake, existed roughly 140,000 to 135,000 years ago. Shoreline evidence suggests both approached 1,000 feet deep, although Little Valley may have remained somewhat brackish and lasted less than half as long as Bonneville.

“The fact that the core spans two and a half glacial cycles allows us to see two fresh-to-salty transitions,” said senior author Sarah Feakins, professor of Earth sciences at USC Dornsife. “It allows us to compare the two fresh lake events for their duration and freshness, to see how fragile and fleeting these moments are.”

Various records from Nevada, California and Arizona show similar wet-to-dry shifts during the same periods, suggesting that Great Salt Lake was responding to changes felt across the region.

Lessons for a warming West

Feakins says that cooler temperatures slowed evaporation while more frequent storms brought additional water into the basin. Lake Bonneville filled “one storm at a time.”

As temperatures rose, she explained, evaporation increased and storms became less frequent. The lakes dwindled, and their water grew saltier until minerals formed crystals and settled on the lakebed.

Great Salt Lake has no outlet; water leaves mainly through evaporation, making the lake highly sensitive to changes in temperature, precipitation and river flow.

Modern Great Salt Lake also faces pressures its ancient predecessors did not. Human water use, mostly for agriculture, reduces the amount reaching the lake, while human-caused climate change increases evaporation.

“Today we’re warming the climate at an unprecedented rate,” Feakins said. “That warming makes the atmosphere thirstier, increasing the rate of evaporative drying from the soil and lakes across the region.”

She cautioned against treating the ancient changes as evidence that the lake’s decline today is natural.

“People shouldn’t use the defense that ‘climate change happened naturally in the past and so the lake shrank’ to justify shrinking lakes today as normal or a natural phenomenon,” So added.

Knowing when things happened in the past requires radioisotope based dating methods. Dates become less precise in the core’s older layers, with margins of error spanning several thousand years. Dating some ancient salt deposits proved especially difficult. The researchers also tried to reconstruct past temperatures, but the lake’s high salinity made the results unreliable.

Despite those limitations, the sediment core provides a nearly continuous record of a lake responding to major shifts in the West’s water balance and shows how a vast freshwater lake can give way to salt when the climate warms and dries.

About the study

In addition to So and Feakins, study authors include Elliot Jagniecki of the Utah Geological Survey; Tim Lowenstein of Binghamton University; Adam Jost and David McGee of MIT; Christopher Kinsley of the Berkeley Geochronology Center; Kristian Olson of Alfred University; and Jessica Tierney of the University of Arizona.

The research was supported by National Science Foundation grants 2152630, 2218544 and 2218547, USC Women in Science and Engineering, the USC Wrigley Institute Graduate Fellowship, and the Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering.

Journal

Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology

DOI

10.1029/2026PA005536

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Fresh to Hypersaline Transitions Across Two Glacial Cycles at Great Salt Lake, Utah