NEWTON is a European Space Agency (ESA) project that aims to demonstrate the potential improvement of short-term dust forecasts when Aeolus wind observations are assimilated in regional numerical simulations performed by the WRF-Version 4.0 (research mode) and WRF-CHEM (operational) models. The modelling experiments will be conducted for two Regions of Interest (ROIs), covering the:

• Tropical Atlantic Ocean-W. Sahara and
• Eastern Mediterranean, subjected to dust transport, encompassing also the major natural erodible dust sources globally.

By contrasting numerical outputs produced with and without assimilated Aeolus wind profiles, they will be investigated the modifications on dust life cycle components and they will be assessed all the contributing factors. In order to justify the potential improvements in the representation of dust fields, the simulated dust loads, resulted from the different model configurations, will be evaluated against observations:

• that will be obtained in the framework of the ASKOS campaign (Cape Verde; June-July 2021),
• acquired at the PANGEA (Antikythera) and CAO (Cyprus) observatories,
• provided by ground-based networks (AERONET, MAN, EARLINET) and
• from the in-house developed databases MIDAS and LIVAS. Overall, NEWTON will highlight the benefits and the necessity of Aeolus data on dust research, paving the way for future operational satellite missions.