A less dusty future?

Abstract

Atmospheric desert dust is potentially highly sensitive to changes in climate, carbon dioxide and human land use. In this study we use 6 different scenarios of the processes responsible for changes in source areas and explore changes in desert dust loading in pre‐industrial and future climates, although all the scenario results are likely to be sensitive to the climate model simulations used for this study. Simulations suggest that future dust may be 20 to 60% lower than current dust loadings. The anthropogenic portion of the current dust loading may be as large as 60%, or humans may have caused a 24% decrease in desert dust, depending on the relative importance of land use, carbon dioxide and human induced climate change. These results suggest there may be a high sensitivity of ‘natural aerosols’ to human intervention, which has enormous implications for climate and biogeochemistry in the future.