Abstract
The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the dustiest region, in the world and understanding the projected changes in the dust concentrations in the region is crucially important. Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) geoengineering aims to reduce global warming, by increasing the reflection of a small amount of the incoming solar radiation to space, and hence reducing the global surface temperatures. Using the output from the Geoengineering Large Ensemble Project (GLENS) project, we show a reduction in the dust concentration in the MENA region under both global warming (RCP8.5) and GLENS-SAI scenarios compared to the present-day climate. This reduction over the MENA region is stronger under the SAI scenario, while for dry season (e.g., summer with the strongest dust events), more reduction has been projected for the global warming scenario. The maximum reduction of the dust concentrations in the MENA region (under both the global warming and SAI) is due to the weakening of the dust hotspots emissions from the sources of the Middle East. Further analysis of the differences in the surface temperature, soil water, precipitation, leaf area index, and near surface wind speed provides some insights into the underlying physical mechanisms that determine the changes in the future dust concentrations in the MENA region. We also conduct wavelet analysis using the time series of the monthly, seasonal, and annual climate changes under the SAI simulation to identify the dust relationship with the considered variables. Our findings show that a stronger reduction of the dust concentration in the MENA region under SAI relative to the RCP8.5 scenario is a complex interplay with temperature reduction, precipitation, soil water and leaf area index enhancement, as well as weakening of near surface winds compared to the present-day climate.
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