A global decline in atmospheric dust during the 21st century

Mineral dust affects Earth’s energy budget, clouds, and biochemistry, yet the evolution of the global dust cycle in recent decades remains shrouded in uncertainty. Here we reconstruct the global dust cycle during the early 21st century by integrating a suite of global dust aerosol optical depth (DAOD) products from satellite-borne lidar, infrared sounders, and multispectral imagers; three aerosol reanalyses; and a compilation of dust-dominated AERONET sites into a large-ensemble inverse modeling framework. We show that North Africa has remained the dominant global dust source, yet it has experienced a decline in DAOD of −10 ± 8% between 2003 and 2023. A comparable reduction is observed across Asia (−10 ± 12%), together driving a global decrease of −10 ± 8%. Similar declines in dust loading, emissions, and deposition indicate a coherent reduction of the global dust cycle. Individual satellite products converge on overall similar trends, providing the strongest evidence to date that the planet has become less dusty in the early 21st century. This decline in atmospheric dust has exerted a positive effective radiative forcing of +0.02 ± 0.05 watts per square meter over 2003–2023, implying that declining atmospheric dust might have modestly contributed to the rapid warming of the past two decades.