Atmospheric river dust scores for 2001 to 2018

The AR "dust score" characterizes the dustiness of the environment associated with ARs that made landfall along the west coast of the U.S. between 2001 and 2018 using satellite-based observations. The AR dust score is calculated from the average of dust aerosol optical depth within the horizontal boundaries of the landfalling AR, as defined by the Rutz AR catalogue. This dataset has been used to investigate how often dust is present in the surroundings of ARs along the U.S. west coast, as dust can impact cloud microphysics and precipitation from these storms. Further information describing the calculation of an AR dust score can be found in Voss et al. (2020) (doi:10.1175/JCLI-D-20-0059.1).