Climate-Driven Amplification of Natural Crustal Dust Emission in China: A Quantitative Assessment for Mid-21st Century Scenarios

Natural crustal dust (NCD) plays a crucial role in Earth’s material cycling and the formation of atmospheric pollution, while also exerting significant ecological and climatic effects. The generation of NCD is comprehensively influenced by meteorological factors and environmental conditions. However, the potential impacts of global climate change on NCD emissions in the coming decades remain unclear, which hinders scientific understanding of their future trajectory. In this study, we developed an integrated method combining wind and fugitive dust emission calculations, based on multisource data sets. Through scenario-based analyses spanning a historical baseline (2001–2024) and future climate projections (2030, 2060) under Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, we systematically quantify spatial and temporal NCD emission patterns across China while evaluating their dynamic interplay with anthropogenic particulate sources. Our findings reveal critical insights: NCD emissions in China exhibit a gradient spatial distribution, decreasing progressively from the north to the south. Influenced by climate differences, these emissions also display distinct seasonal patterns. Projected inventories indicate that an intensification of northern NCD emissions by 2060 is primarily a function of increasing temperatures, contrasting with anthropogenic particulate matter reductions driven by air quality policies. This divergence positions NCD as the principal particulate constituent in northern urban clusters. Taking the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region as an example, future NCD emissions of PM2.5 and PM10 may reach 42.4 to 303.98% and 140.45 to 844.27% of anthropogenic emissions, respectively. While uncertainties persist regarding climate change and dust–climate feedback, our work provides the first empirical evidence of NCD’s escalating dominance in China’s pollution regime.