Remote Saharan dust influences Earth’s radiation budget and tropical North Atlantic ocean-atmosphere temperature variability that might even attenuate Hurricane activity. In a new research study an international team of geoscientists reconstructed the history of Saharan dust storms during the last 12,000 years. The researchers identified several millennial-scale phases of enhanced Saharan dust supplies during the transition of the former ‘green Sahara’ to the present-day hyper-arid desert.