Numerical Studies on a Severe Dust Storm in East Asia Using WRF-Chem

Abstract

Dust storm is one of the important natural disasters, which can have significant impact on terrestrial ecosystem, global climate, air quality and human health. In Mar. 19-23, 2010, a serious dust storm occurred over East Asia. It started from Mongolia, initially extending to the east, turning to the South of China, then back to the Northeast Asia. About 20% of the areas in China suffered from this severe dust event and the air was heavily polluted with massive airborne particulates. The Air Pollution Index (API) in many cities exceeded 500 when dust storm passed by, while the maximum surface PM 10 concentration reached 1900 µg/m 3 in east area. The coarse particles were dominated in PM 10 , with fine particles named as PM 2.5 only accounting for 5% -20% at cities along the dust moving track in South and East China. MODIS and CALIPSO satellite data were used to investigate the horizontal and vertical patterns of optical parameters of dust aerosol. The average AOD reached 2 -2.5 on dust days in most southeast regions. The dust can be transported up to 5 Km with maximum aerosol extinction coefficient of 0.35 -0.4 at 1 -3 Km in vertical. Synoptic weather was analyzed to understand the meteorological conditions and the backward trajectories were calculated to investigate the movements of air mass. The WRFChem model (Version 3.2) was applied to simulate the transport and deposition of the dust aerosols. The performance of Shaw (2008) and Chin (2002)

A Study of a Severe Spring Dust Event in 2021 over East Asia with WRF-Chem and Multiple Platforms of Observations

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Synoptic analysis and simulation of an unusual dust event over the Atacama Desert

“…Regional models are a useful tool to analyze dust storms, as they not only provide information of the dust fluxes on high temporal and three‐dimensional spatial resolution but also give insight into local processes involved in the onset and the temporal evolution of the events. Numerous models have been developed in recent years, and evidence is found that they are able to realistically simulate individual dust storms (Hamidi et al, ; Yu et al, ).…”