Source Limitation Could Have Major Implications to Dust Emission Estimates

Abstract A model for source‐limited dust emission is proposed. The model accounts for the evolution of the supply of soil dust depleted by dust emission and enriched by the process of surface renewal, together with several other new developments. The model is tested with a field dataset. The impact of source limitation to dust emission is profound. Our tests show that by considering source limitation, the model predicted dust emission can reduce by one order of magnitude in a real‐case simulation period of less than 20 days. We show that the process of dust emission is much more complex and variable than considered in previous dust models. Our findings have far‐reaching implications, for example, to the global dust emission estimates. Because source‐limited dust emission has so far not been represented in global dust models, the model estimated dust emission is only its potential and may be a substantial overestimate.