Formation and evolution of dust-generating deserts and their impact on Earth’s climate (DUST)
Deserts are vital to our planet as they host unique ecosystems and influence global climate. However, surprisingly little is known about the origin of deserts and how they regulate Earth’s climate. The DUST project will quantify the evolution of key deserts and constrain their role in regulating the climate system.
Formation and evolution of dust-generating deserts and their impact on Earth’s climate (DUST)
Dust-generating deserts are critical to Earth’s climate and ecosystems, as their supply of wind-blown dust influences atmospheric processes and fertilizes land and ocean photosynthesis. Dust derived from these deserts has influenced past and present climates and will continue to affect future climate dynamics – but the past and future influence of dust remains a major uncertainty in climate science. Despite their global importance, our understanding of when and how key dust-generating deserts formed remains limited. It is also unclear exactly how they regulated the global carbon cycle and Earth’s energy budget during past warm/cold periods, particularly during glacial cycles.
The overarching goal of DUST is to address these fundamental knowledge gaps using a novel and innovative source-to-sink approach that combines high-resolution geochronometry with Earth system modelling. DUST will thus quantify the expansion and activity of key dust-generating deserts and constrain the link between dust and global climate.
A key goal of DUST is to test the “dust-before-ice” hypothesis; that the growth of large Northern Hemisphere (NH) ice sheets and the onset of ice-age cycles ~2.6 million years ago were linked to the expansion of dust-generating deserts.
Funding body: The Carlsberg Foundation
Grant: Semper Ardens Accomplish
Amount: 12,974,170 DKK
Link to the project on the Carlsberg Foundation website:
https://www.carlsbergfondet.dk/en/what-we-have-funded/cf25-1631/