Dust inputs affect ocean CDR
Tom Goreau
- Review Article
- Published: 11 November 2025
Global dust impacts on biogeochemical cycles and climate
- Jinbo Zan,
- Barbara A. Maher,
- Xiaomin Fang,
- Thomas Stevens,
- Wenxiao Ning,
- Fuli Wu,
- Yibo Yang,
- Jian Kang &
- Zhe Hu
Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 6, pages789–807 (2025)
Abstract
Windblown mineral dust is a nutrient source to the ocean, influencing global ocean productivity, ocean carbon uptake and climate. In this Review, we examine how dust emission fluxes, sources and compositions have changed over the past 7 Myr and consider the implications for ocean productivity. Since the Late Cenozoic, global cooling and orogenic uplift have enhanced dust emissions from major source regions and fluxes to downwind ocean basins, with the associated nutrient supply varying with dust origin. Glacially derived Asian dust contains higher concentrations of ferrous iron (typically exceeding 30% of the total iron) and phosphorus than the aged, highly oxidized mineral dust from North Africa, which has negligible ferrous iron content. Indeed, Asian dust has a notable influence on Pacific Ocean productivity and, potentially, climate. For example, Middle Pleistocene increases in the content of Asian dust Fe2+ (~45%) and P (~55%) coincided with a threefold to fivefold rise in glacial productivity in the South China Sea and a concurrent shift in phytoplankton ecology in the lower-latitude North Pacific. Therefore, decreasing glaciogenic dust–nutrient supply under continued global warming could notably impact ocean productivity, especially in the Pacific Ocean. Future research should focus on constraining the composition and bioavailability of dust-derived nutrients across a wide range of globally important dust sources so that dust composition and related feedbacks can be better parameterized in Earth system models.
Michael Pilarski
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Tom Goreau
The abstract says that most Sahara dust iron is highly oxidized and low in P.
Actually Sahara dust is an extremely important source of trans-Atlantic phosphorus delivery, whose ecological impact stimulating tree growth has been measured in Brazil and Panama.
However almost all the P comes from a single source, a dry lake bed in Northern Chad being eroded by winds.
I spent some time in the northern Senegal Sahel with cattle herders, bathing in Sahara dust. The soil is full of iron concretions. To my surprise, the soil was extremely fertile and the natural, crop, and ornamental plants showed NO obvious plant nutrient deficiencies, as long as they had enough water (which seemed the major growth limiting factor, not soil fertility itself)!
The women complained that in the rainy season the children constantly were sick with malaria. Unfortunately I did not then have your Chinese Artemisia seeds to give them!
Michael Pilarski
Mike Hands
Program Director. Land for Life Program
Inga Foundation
UK
