Quantification of Critical Thresholds in Soil Moisture and the Leaf Area Index Regulating Aeolian Dust Events: A Sensitivity Analysis of the Response of Aeolian Dust Events to Wind Velocity Variations

Elucidating the sensitivity of aeolian dust events to wind velocity variations is crucial for projecting future dust emissions patterns within the context of climate variability. However, a global distribution of this sensitivity with observational constraints that may be implemented in climate models remain inadequately explored. Using long‐term satellite observations spanning 2003–2017, we propose an empirical methodology to assess the sensitivity of aeolian dust events to variations in wind velocity. Subsequently, we quantitatively analyze the relationships between this sensitivity and two key influential factors: soil moisture (SM) content and the leaf area index (LAI). Our findings reveal a global mean sensitivity of 0.06 s m−1, indicating that the dust optical depth would change by 0.06 s m−1 under one wind velocity unit variation. Dust events exhibit negligible sensitivity to variations in wind velocity when the SM exceeds 0.17 m3 m−3 or the LAI exceeds 0.45 m2 m−2, which means that dust emission processes are effectively constrained under these conditions. Furthermore, employing these critical thresholds, we compute the fraction of days with constrained dust events. We show that under four shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs) (SSP126, SSP245, SSP370, and SSP585), areas experiencing an increase in constrained days and those experiencing a decrease account for approximately 10.6%–12.5% and 9.3%–10.3% of the global land area, respectively.