Sand seas are vast expanses of Earth’s surface containing large areas of aeolian dunes—topographic patterns manifest from above-threshold winds and a supply of loose sand. Predictions of the role of future climate change for sand-sea activity are sparse and contradictory. Here we examine the impact of climate on all of Earth’s presently-unvegetated sand seas, using ensemble runs of an Earth System Model for historical and future Shared Socioeconomic Pathway (SSP) scenarios. We find that almost all of the sand seas decrease in activity relative to present-day and industrial-onset for all future SSP scenarios, largely due to more intermittent sand-transport events. An increase in event wait-times and decrease in sand transport is conducive to vegetation growth. We expect dune-forming winds will become more unimodal, and produce larger incipient wavelengths, due to weaker and more seasonal winds. Our results indicate that these qualitative changes in Earth’s deserts cannot be mitigated.

沙海是广阔的地球表面，包含大面积的风沙沙丘——地形模式从阈值以上的风和松散的沙子的供应中显现出来。对未来气候变化对沙海活动的影响的预测稀少且相互矛盾。在这里，我们使用历史和未来共享社会经济路径 (SSP) 情景的地球系统模型的整体运行来检查气候对地球上所​​有目前没有植被的沙海的影响。我们发现，对于所有未来的 SSP 情景，几乎所有沙海的活动都相对于现在和工业开始减少，这主要是由于更多的间歇性沙子运输事件。事件等待时间的增加和沙子运输的减少有利于植被的生长。我们预计沙丘形成的风将变得更加单峰，由于更弱和更季节性的风，会产生更大的初始波长。我们的研究结果表明，地球沙漠中的这些质变无法减轻。