Springtime East Asian dust heating contributes to interannual poleward shift of the North Pacific storm track

The North Pacific storm track plays a key role in shaping climate across the Arctic and western North America by modulating precipitation and temperature, yet its interannual sensitivity to springtime East Asian dust remains poorly understood. Based on the Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2) reanalysis data from 1980 to 2022, we find that anomalously high springtime East Asian dust loading is robustly associated with a systematic poleward shift of the North Pacific storm track on interannual timescales. It is revealed that shortwave absorption by the trans-Pacific dust plume coincides with warming in the 850–400 hPa layer and an anomalous anticyclonic circulation over the North Pacific. This thermal perturbation restructures the meridional temperature gradient and shifts the zone of maximum Eady growth rate poleward, thereby relocating the preferred region for baroclinic eddy development to higher latitudes. The Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) sensitivity experiments reproduce the spatial pattern of the storm track response, supporting the proposed radiative–dynamical pathway. These findings indicate that natural dust aerosols can modulate large-scale North Pacific atmospheric dynamics on interannual timescales and suggest that springtime dust variability should be considered in regional climate assessments.