During 2001–2017, the model simulation shows a decreasing trend of dust emission fluxes in most regions of Eastern Sources ( p < 0.1) (Fig. 1d ), which is consistent with the decreasing trend of dust storm days in observations.
In the eastern part of the Tarim Basin, the model simulates an increasing trend of dust emission fluxes, but the trend is not as significant as that in the observed dust storm days ( p > 0.1; Fig. 1d ), indicating the air flow complexity related to dust emission in the Tarim Basin may not be well resolved by the MERRA-2 reanalysis due to its relatively coarse resolution 28 .