Large influence of dust on the Precambrian climate

On present-day Earth, dust emissions are restricted to a few desert regions mainly due to land vegetation, leading to relatively small atmospheric dust loading and a slight cooling effect on surface climate. For the Precambrian, when land vegetation was absent, dust emission may have been much more widespread. Simulations using CESM1.2.2 suggest global dust emission could have been an order of magnitude larger than today and could have cooled the global climate by about 10 °C. Dust deposition to the ocean—an important nutrient source—also increased by about a factor of 10. Thus, dust was a critical component of the early Earth system and should be included in studies of Precambrian climate and biogeochemistry.

Peng Liu, Yonggang Liu, Yiran Peng, Jean-François Lamarque, Mingxing Wang, Yongyun Hu