A storm of yellow dust darkens the skies above Beijing, an increasingly familiar phenomenon blamed on the disappearance of Asian forests. A week later, in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range, where annual precipitation levels are expected to decline as the climate changes, a snowstorm delights skiers.

The storms are starkly different and separated by thousands of miles, but scientists have discovered that they are linked.

Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California, San Diego, have discovered that dust storms in Asia could help douse the Sierras with snow, bolstering California’s economy and rejuvenating its environment.

Spring and summer snowmelts in the Sierras provide fresh water for 25 million people, for wildlife and millions of acres of farmland, as well as for hydropower that meets up to 15 percent of the state’s electricity needs.