Resolving Convection Doubles Sahel's Contribution to Global Dust Emission During the Monsoon Season

Abstract Current climate models struggle to capture the mean state and variability of dust emissions. This is partially due to their inability to resolve convection, a consequence of their relatively coarse spatial resolution. Via analysis of output from an offline dust emission scheme forced with output from a global storm‐resolving model, we show that resolving convection doubles the contribution of the Sahel, an important dust source region sensitive to environmental change, to global dust emissions from 6.1% to 12.3% during its late monsoon season. Resolving convection induces an increase in friction velocity and a decrease in soil moisture, and thus enhances Sahelian dust emissions. These changes are due to improved representation of mesoscale convective systems associated with African Easterly Waves. These results demonstrate that high‐resolution modeling with resolved convection can improve understanding of the global dust cycle and how dust emissions are affected by a changing climate.