Analysis of a Severe Dust Storm Event over China: Application of the WRF-Dust Model

Abstract

A severe dust storm (SDS) event occurred during March-20 to March-22, 2010 in China. A regional dynamical model coupled with a dust model (WRF-Dust) is used for analyzing this SDS event. The distribution of API (air pollution index) values in China and satellite (moderate-resolution imaging spectroradiometer-MODIS) AOD (aerosol optical depth) data are used to trace the dust storm and to compare with the model result. Several model sensitive studies are performed to analyze the roles of physical processes (such as dust source, transport, and deposition) in controlling the SDS event. The result suggests that the Gobi Desert is a major dust source of the SDS event. By contrast, the Taklamakan Desert plays minor roles for affecting the high dust concentrations in eastern/southern China during the SDS event. This study also suggests that a large amount of dust particles was deposited at the surface during the transport pathway between the Gobi Desert and eastern/southern China, and the high surface concentrations of dust particles can be considered as a new dust source region, which produced dust air pollution when surface winds were strong. In this study, we define this process as a propagate dust source (PDS). The calculation shows that the calculated dust concentrations were considerably lower than the measured values in the downwind regions of deserts when the PDS process was not included in the model. By including the PDS process, the calculated dust pollution in eastern and southern China is considerably improved. The further detailed analysis shows that the PDS played important roles in controlling the long-range transport of dust particles during the SDS event. This study suggests that this regional dust model (WRF-Dust) is a useful tool to analyze the important processes of dust storms that are often occurred in China.

Influence of an Asian Dust Storm and Southeast Asian Biomass Burning on the Characteristics of Seashore Atmospheric Aerosols in Southern Taiwan

“…The comparison of PM 2.5 , PM 10 , and PM 2.5 /PM 10 ratios between this research and several related studies is shown in Table 2. This study and the compared studies all observed that the concentrations of PM 2.5 , PM 10 , and TSP in ADS periods were significantly higher than those in Non-ADS periods (Mori et al, 2003;Chen et al, 2004;Lee et al, 2009;Hong et al, 2010;Bian et al, 2011;Li et al, 2011;Wang et al, 2011;Zhao et al, 2011;Chuang et al, 2012); however, we also found that the PM 2.5 /PM 10 value decreased in the ADS period because of the increase of dust (PM 2.5-10 ) in this study. This phenomenon is similar to those in several studies, indicating that ADS increased the regional concentrations of atmospheric particles (especially that of coarse particulate matter (PM 2.5-10 )) greatly (Chen et al, 2004;Cheng et al, 2005;Cheng et al, 2007;Cheng et al, 2009).…”

Variability of Aerosol Parameters Derived from Ground and Satellite Measurements over Varanasi Located in the Indo-Gangetic Basin

“…The back trajectory analysis provides a threedimensional (latitude, longitude and altitude) description of the pathways followed by air mass as a function of time by using National Centre for Environmental prediction (NCEP) reanalysis wind as input to the model. The back trajectories are very important to identify the origin of source regions and the transport pathways of aerosols to reach the measurement site and also to investigate the aerosol properties and types (Bian et al, 2011). Seven days air mass back trajectories for four typical high aerosol loading days of measurements during the year 2011 on 9 th April (AOD = 1.26), 16 th July (AOD = 1.79), 1 st November (AOD = 1.65) and 15 th December 2011 (AOD = 1.77) are shown in Fig.…”

Wet and dry deposition of mineral dust particles in Japan: factors related to temporal variation and spatial distribution

“…Although sampling intervals differed, dry deposition fluxes for this event were also the highest at other sites: Toyama, 167 mg m −2 day −1 for 20-22 March, Tottori, 169 mg m −2 day −1 for 20-23 March, and Cape Hedo, 70 mg m −2 day −1 for 17-24 March 2010. Many case studies were reported for this event because atmospheric dust concentrations were remarkably high over wide areas of China and Korea including not only the East China Sea but also the South China Sea (Bian et al, 2011;Li et al, 2011;Lin et al, 2012;Tatarov et al, 2012). Table 1 presents dry annual dust flux and the wet / dry flux ratios.…”