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Dust-DN Webinar – Prof. Jasper Kok

Webinar #2

The Overlooked Radiative Forcing of Desert Dust

17 March 2026 | 15:00–16:00 CET | Online (Microsoft Teams)

Overview

We are pleased to invite you to the next webinar in the Dust-DN expert webinar series. This session features Prof. Jasper Kok (University of California, Los Angeles – UCLA), a leading researcher in atmospheric dust and its role in the climate system.

The webinar will focus on the radiative forcing of desert dust, a major but often overlooked component in climate change assessments. The session will include a scientific presentation followed by an open Q&A. Participation is strongly encouraged for all Dust-DN doctoral candidates, supervisors, and collaborators.

Registration

Participation is free of charge, but registration is required.
Please register in advance using the link below to receive access to the Microsoft Teams session:

Register Here

Event Details

  • Date: 17 March 2026
  • Time: 15:00 – 16:00 CET
  • Format: Online (Microsoft Teams)
  • Speaker: Prof. Jasper Kok, UCLA

Abstract

Projections of future climate changes are highly sensitive to the fraction of the historical greenhouse warming that has been offset by the coincident increase in cooling from aerosols. It is surprising then that the radiative forcing due to changes in one of the major aerosol species, desert dust, is normally neglected in climate change assessments and projections of future climate changes.

Here we show that this is problematic: we reconstruct historical changes in desert dust using dozens of sedimentary records of dust deposition, finding that global dust mass loading has increased by 55 ± 30% (90% confidence interval) since pre-industrial times. We combine this result with estimated radiative effects for the various mechanisms through which dust impacts climate, including a new data-driven constraint on the poorly quantified longwave direct radiative effect, finding that this historical increase in dust produced a global mean effective radiative forcing of -0.07 ± 0.18 Wm-2.

As such, dust might have slightly counteracted greenhouse warming, biasing climate change projections and assessments of climate sensitivity. To enable climate models and climate assessments to account for dust radiative forcing, we provide a dust emission inventory that captures the historical dust increase.

Biography

Prof. Jasper Kok is a Professor in the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at UCLA. His research focuses on physical processes relevant to climate and planetary sciences, with fundamental contributions to the understanding of desert dust emission and its impacts on the climate system.

He is the author of over 60 peer-reviewed publications and has received several prestigious distinctions, including the Henry Houghton Early Career Award from the American Meteorological Society.