Dust aerosols play important roles in the Earth system by degrading air quality, influencing weather systems, perturbing radiation budget, modulating biogeochemical cycles, and affecting the climate. Assessing these impacts requires realistic and accurate characterization of dust particle properties, emissions, transport, and deposition. This session invites presentations that report the latest advances in modeling and observational characterization of dust and its impacts on various components of the Earth system, including but not limited to: (1) properties and distributions of dust assessed from in situ and remote sensing measurements; (2) dust emission and transport quantified using observations and models; (3) dust variability in association with climate variability and anthropogenic activities on various time scales; (4) effects of dust aerosols on radiation budget and cloud microphysics (i.e., direct, indirect, and semi-direct effects); (5) interactions of dust with precipitation, circulation, and regional climate (e.g., African easterly jet–African easterly wave system, African and Indian monsoons, tropical cyclones, mesoscale convective complexes, and springtime cyclones over Southern Europe and Asia); (6) interactions with global biogeochemical cycle; (7) dust impacts on air quality and public health; and (8) novel use of observations to constrain dust modeling.