Drivers of Severe Dust Generation and Transport in 2025 in the Northern Chihuahuan Desert

Abstract

An exceptional number and magnitude of aeolian dust events formed in 2025 in the northern Chihuahuan Desert. The frequency of dust storms experienced in El Paso, Texas in 2025 was only exceeded during the 1930s Dust Bowl, and multiple records were surpassed for dust concentrations. Unusually strong winds in the USA – Mexico border region, which was simultaneously experiencing extreme to exceptional multi-year drought, helped trigger these events, but geomorphology and land use amplified their severity and impacts. Many events originated in a belt of landforms long identified as North American dust emission hotspots, focused on the northern Rio Casas Grandes basin, including playas in relict pluvial lake basins, low-relief alluvial desert plains including dry river channels and floodplains, and sand sheets, aligned parallel to prevailing storm winds. This region has experienced extensive agricultural expansion over the last 25 years and has become progressively more hydrologically-stressed. In 2025, agricultural land and denuded floodplains formed additional dust source areas farther west than had previously been typical. Between 2001 and 2023, agriculture in the Janos and Ascension Municipalities of Chihuahua, and Hidalgo County in New Mexico, expanded by a factor of ~3 to ~5. In Spring 2025, over 5% of the area had been disturbed and 70% of the disturbed land was barren, totaling over 2380 km2. This included newly established fields that were fallowed or abandoned due to drought and/or lack of irrigation water, and rangelands that were overgrazed to the point of having almost no vegetation. In summary, drought and land use changes resulting in increased sediment availability, coupled with an increase in transport capacity by stronger winds, may have surpassed a geomorphic threshold in 2025, causing an exceptional increase in dust. If drought continues and unless more sustainable land management practices can be implemented, dustier days are likely to continue for the Chihuahuan Desert borderlands.