A size‐segregated soil dust emission and transport model, Northern Aerosol Regional Climate Model (NARCM), was used to simulate the production and transport of Asian soil dust during the Aerosol Characterization Experiment‐Asia (ACE‐Asia) period from March to May 2001. The model is driven by the NCEP reanalyzed meteorology and has all the atmospheric aerosol physical processes of soil dust: production, transport, growth, coagulation, and dry and wet deposition. A Chinese soil texture map that infers the soil grain‐size distribution with 12 categories was generated to drive the size‐distributed soil dust emission scheme [Alfaro et al., 1997; Marticorena and Bergametti, 1995]. The size distribution of vertical dust flux was derived from the observed surface dust‐size distribution in the desert regions. Parameters applicable to the Asian deserts for the dust emission scheme are assessed. Model simulations were compared with ground‐based measurements in East Asia and North America and with satellite measurements for the same period of time. The model captured most of the dust mobilization episodes during this period in China and reasonably simulated the concentrations in source regions and downwind areas from East China to western North America. About 252.8 Mt of soil dust below d < 40 μm was estimated to be emitted in the East Asian deserts between 1 March and 31 May 2001 with ∼60% attributed to four major dust storms. The vertical dust loadings above 700 hPa correlate reasonably well with Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer aerosol index (TOMS AI) observations. The sensitivity analysis of model performance to soil size distribution, water moisture, and meteorology was carried out with the observational data to establish the most appropriate parameters and conditions for the Chinese soil dust production and transport.

[1] Simulations of Asian dust emissions over the past 43 years are presented based on a size-dependent soil dust emission and transport model (NARCM) along with supporting data from a network of surface stations. The deserts in Mongolia and in western and northern China (mainly the Taklimakan and Badain Juran, respectively) contribute $70% of the total dust emissions; non-Chinese sources account for $40% of this. Several areas, especially the Onqin Daga sandy land, Horqin sandy land, and Mu Us Desert, have increased in dust emissions over the past 20 years, but efforts to reduce desertification in these areas may have little effect on Asian dust emission amount because these are not key sources. The model simulations indicate that meteorology and climate have had a greater influence on the Asian dust emissions and associated Asian dust storm occurrences than desertification.

Mass loading, 20 elemental concentrations, and time series of aerosol particles were investigated over the China Dust Storm Research (ChinaDSR) observational network stations from March to May 2001 during the intensive field campaign period of ACE‐Asia. Four extensive and several minor dust storm (DS) events were observed. Mass balance calculations showed that 45–82% of the observed aerosol mass was attributable to Asian soil dust particles among the sites, in which Ca and Fe contents are enriched to 12% and 6%, respectively, in the Western High‐Dust source regions compared with dust aerosols ejected from the Northern High‐Dust source regions. For the latter areas, elemental contents exhibited high Si (30%) and low Fe (4%). For all major source areas and depositional regions, aluminium (Al) comprises 7% of Asian dust. Air mass back‐trajectory analysis showed that five major transport pathways of Asian dust storms dominated dust transport in China during spring 2001, all of which passed over Beijing. Measurements also suggest that the sand land in northeastern China is a potential source for Asian dust. The size distribution for estimating vertical dust flux was derived from the observed surface dust size distributions in the desert regions. For particle diameters between 0.25 and 16 μm, a lognormal distribution was obtained from averaging observations at various deserts with a mass mean diameter of 4.5 μm and a standard deviation of 1.5. This range of soil dust constitutes about 69% of the total dust loading. The fractions for particles in the size ranges of <2.5 μm and >16 μm are around 1.7% and 30%, respectively.