Mineral dust plays an important role on global climate with implications on radiation, cloud properties and on the carbon cycle through the fertilization of marine and terrestrial ecosystems. Atmospheric dust loadings, deposition rates and source vary with climate and tectonic activity. Properties of dust deposited in sedimentary and environmental archives provide important paleoclimate proxies. Advances have been realized in understanding dust-climate interactions, but discrepancies remain among models and between models and observations.

This session focuses on the changes in the dust cycle and related climate variations on all timescales during the past. We welcome contributions focusing on: - model simulation of past dust-climate interactions; - using dust as a climate indicator in archives (ice cores, marine sediments, loess, etc.); - measurements of aspects of the dust cycle (emission, transport deposition, particle characteristics). We particularly invite contributions integrating different disciplines and/or focusing on knowledge transfer between the modelling and observational communities.