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The influence of dust on climate, through changes in the radiative properties of the atmosphere and/or the CO2 content of the oceans and atmosphere (through iron fertilisation of high nutrient, low chlorophyll, HNLC, regions of the world's oceans), remains a poorly quantified and actively changing element of the Earth's climate system. Dust-cycle models presently employ a relatively simple representation of dust properties; these simplifications may severely limit the realism of simulations of the impact of changes in dust loading on either or both radiative forcing and biogeochemical cycling. Further, whilst state-of-the-art models achieve reasonable estimates of dust deposition in the far-field (ie at ocean locations), they under-estimate-by an order of magnitude-levels of dust deposition over the continents, unless glacigenic dust production is explicitly and spatially represented. The'DIRTMAP2'working group aims to …