Large-scale classical dust cycle models developed more than two decades ago assume for simplicity that the Earth's surface is free of vegetation, reduce dust emission estimates by adding vegetation cover, and calibrate the estimates to the observed atmospheric dust optical depth (DOD). . As a result, these models are expected to be valid for use with dust climate projections in Earth system models. We find little spatial relationship between the DOD frequency and satellite-observed point source dust emission (DPS), and a difference of up to 2 orders of magnitude. We compare the DPS data with an exemplary traditional dust emission model (TEM) and an albedo-based dust emission model (AEM), which accounts for aerodynamic roughness in space and time. ( Adrian Chappell, Nicholas P. Webb, Mark Hennen, Charles S. Zender,  Philippe Ciais, Kerstin Schepanski,  Brandon L. Edwards, Nancy P. Ziegler,  Yves Balkanski,  Daniel Tong, John F. Leys, Stephan Heidenreich,  Robert Hynes, David Fuchs,  Zhenzhong Zeng, Matthew C. Baddock, Jeffrey A. Lee, Tarek Kandakji, more at agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com)