Processed dust emission data and code for "Beyond the horizon: long-term benefits of vegetation restoration for dust mitigation in Eastern Asia"

Dust storms originating in drylands represent a significant natural disaster, with profound environmental and socio-economic impacts both regionally and globally. Understanding the drivers of dust emissions, particularly how climate change and vegetation dynamics interact, is crucial for addressing desertification. In Eastern Asia, recent studies have suggested that the primary driver behind the decline in dust emissions is weaker wind speeds, rather than vegetation recovery. However, the long-term impacts of wind, vegetation, and their interactions on dust emissions remain poorly understood.

This study aims to quantify the influence of long-term wind and vegetation changes on dust emissions across different temporal scales in Eastern Asia, using a combination of process-based statistical analyses and a physically-based model. Additionally, the study assesses how dust emissions are affected by future climate scenarios, focusing on changes in three primary drivers—surface wind speed, vegetation cover, and soil moisture—using outputs from multiple Earth system models. The dataset includes dust emission simulations from 1982 to 2023, as well as future projections under different climate scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, and SSP5-8.5) based on CMIP6 models.