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  • Review Article
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Global dust impacts on biogeochemical cycles and climate

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 6, pages 789–807 (2025)Cite this article

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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.

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Fig. 1: Global dust sources, transport paths and emission and deposition fluxes.
Fig. 2: Nutrient concentration and composition, and grain size distribution over major global dust sources.
Fig. 3: Late Cenozoic aeolian dust fluxes in major ocean basins and their links to climate variability.
Fig. 4: Strontium–neodymium (Sr–Nd) isotopic cross-plots and potential dust source areas and transport pathways.
Fig. 5: Nutrient limitation and net primary production in the global ocean.
Fig. 6: Dust fluxes, ocean productivity and carbon cycling in the North Pacific and Southern Ocean in the geological past.
Fig. 7: The role of mineral dust in modulating the global carbon cycle and climate.

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Data availability

All data are available through refs. 2,11,12,16,24,25,30,31,35,36,55,88,90,91,113,116,118,119,144,149,152,153,154,155,156,157,158,160,161,163,169,170,171 and are publicly available from the website at: https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/products/paleoclimatology.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Young Scientists Fund (Category A) of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (42525207), the Excellent Research Group for Tibetan Plateau Earth System (42588201) and the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2023YFF0804500) for financial support. The authors also thank Z. Ma and S. Wang from the Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, for their assistance in data synthesis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Tibetan Plateau Earth System and Resources Environment, Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jinbo Zan, Xiaomin Fang, Wenxiao Ning, Fuli Wu, Yibo Yang, Jian Kang & Zhe Hu

  2. College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Jinbo Zan, Xiaomin Fang, Wenxiao Ning, Fuli Wu, Yibo Yang, Jian Kang & Zhe Hu

  3. Centre for Environmental Magnetism and Palaeomagnetism, Lancaster Environment Centre, University of Lancaster, Lancaster, UK

    Barbara A. Maher

  4. Department of Earth Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Thomas Stevens

  5. Department of Geosciences and Geography, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Thomas Stevens

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Contributions

J.Z. led the conceptualization of the Review. J.Z., B.A.M., X.F., T.S., F.W. and Y.Y. wrote the paper. J.Z., B.A.M., W.N., J.K. and Z.H. collected the data. W.N. contributed to Figs. 1, 3 and 5. J.K. and Z.H. contributed to Figs. 4 and 6, respectively.

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Zan, J., Maher, B.A., Fang, X. et al. Global dust impacts on biogeochemical cycles and climate. Nat Rev Earth Environ 6, 789–807 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-025-00734-2

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