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Large quantities dust from the deserts of the Middle East can settle on the Tibetan Plateau, darkening the region’s snowpack and accelerating snow melt. A new atmospheric modeling study suggests that, in some years, heavy springtime dust deposition can set off a series of feedbacks that intensify the Indian summer monsoon. The findings could explain a correlation between Tibetan snowpack and the Indian monsoon first observed by British meteorologist Henry Blanford in 1884.