We sincerely appreciate your time and constructive feedback on our manuscript. Your comments and valuable suggestions have helped us improve the clarity and presentation of our work. Below, we address your specific concerns point by point, and we hope the responses adequately address your concerns.

1. Choice of Periods

Comment: Section 2.1.3. Lines 147-151. The choice of these periods is not very clear, and it should be justified. In addition, are the conclusions depending on this choice?

Response:

Thanks for your suggestion! We agree that the rationale for selecting the two periods (1980–2000 and 2001–2023) should be clarified. These periods are chosen based on:

• We tested the PC of the dust field from SVD decomposition by a sliding t-test and found a significant climatic abruptness in 2000 (p<0.05), a conclusion that is also consistent with previous dust studies (e.g., Liu et al., 2023).
• Global warming (global warming acceleration and stagnation phases) and atmospheric circulation changed significantly in the late 1990s (e.g., Fyfe et al., 2013; Salinger et al., 2005).
• The two periods are also selected to take into account the fact that the composite sample sizes of the two periods are comparable and do not overlap.

This multi-faceted approach to period selection ensures our analysis captures genuine climate-dust relationships rather than artificial temporal artifacts. We have verified that our main conclusions remain unchanged when using different window lengths. Specifically, Fig. 2e (L226) in the original manuscript shows that the dust field PC exhibits a stable and significant sliding correlation with the land-sea thermal contrast index beginning in the early 21st century (multiple window lengths (15, 17, 21, and 23 years)), suggesting that the conclusions are robust. We will include the above justifications in the revised manuscript.

1. Figure Readability

Comment: In my opinion, most of the figures are quite small and not easily readable when printed. The dashed dot vectors are not visible at all.

Response:

Thanks for your suggestion! We apologize for the suboptimal figure quality. In the revised version, we will:

(1) Enlarge all figures and adjust line weights/colors for better visibility.

(2) Zoom in and replace the high contrast pattern ensures that the dashed dot vectors are clearly visible.

(3) Provide high-resolution versions (e.g., 800 dpi) for printing.

1. Bold Text in Figure Captions

Comment: I would eliminate the bold part of each Figure caption.

Response:

Thanks for your suggestion! We will revise all figure captions to use standard formatting (no bold text) for consistency with journal style.

1. Statistical Threshold

Comment: Line 294. Why using a threshold of 0.1 for p rather than the usual one of 0.05. Could the conclusions change if a more standard threshold if chosen?

Response:

We sincerely appreciate this thoughtful question, as it rightly highlights an important methodological consideration in statistical analysis. We re-ran all analyses with p < 0.05 and found that the primary conclusions (e.g., shifts in dust pathways and anomalous cyclonic and anticyclonic circulation) remain valid, though some regional details become less pronounced. However, our choice of p < 0.1 is carefully considered and aligns with several previous studies examining decadal-scale climate variability (e.g., Liu et al., 2023). This slightly more lenient threshold is sometimes warranted, due to the limited sample size of decadal periods and to maintain the continuity of the dust transport path.

Reference:

Fyfe J C, Gillett N P, Zwiers F W. Overestimated global warming over the past 20 years[J]. Nature Climate Change, 2013, 3(9): 767-769.

Liu G, Li J, Ying T. The shift of decadal trend in Middle East dust activities attributed to North Tropical Atlantic variability[J]. Science Bulletin, 2023, 68(13): 1439-1446.

Salinger M J. Climate variability and change: past, present and future–an overview[J]. Climatic change, 2005, 70(1): 9-29.