Reconstructing the 21st century dust aerosol cycle using space-borne and ground-based observations

Climate models often struggle to accurately simulate both historical and modern variations in dust, limiting their ability to account for the impact of these fluctuations on the Earth's system, including their influence on climate change. This study aims to construct a detailed representation of the temporal evolution of 3D dust distribution over the past few decades. By utilizing space-borne and ground-based observations from IASI, MODIS, CALIPSO, AERONET, EARLINET, and DOE's MPL datasets, we assess the temporal evolution of dust aerosol optical depth over 15 major dust source regions. This data is used in an inverse model to reconstruct the 3D distribution of dust and 2D size-resolved emission and deposition fluxes. Integrating this detailed reconstruction into climate models will enhance predictions of dust-induced climate changes and better evaluate dust impacts on the modern climate.