Unseen Dust Emission and Global Dust Abundance: Documenting Dust Emission from the Mojave Desert (USA) by Daily Remote Camera Imagery and Wind‐Erosion Measurements

Abstract

A large gap in understanding the effects of atmospheric dust at all spatial scales is uncertainty about how much and whence dust is emitted annually. Direct digital recording of dust emission at high spatial and temporal resolution would together with periodic flux measurements support improved estimates of local‐scale dust flux. Remote camera recording of dust‐emitting settings on and around Soda Lake (Mojave Desert) was conducted every 15 min during daylight between 10 November 2010 and 31 December 2016. Examination of 135,000 images revealed frequent dust events characterized as dust days, 68 per year on average, when dust plumes obscured mountains beyond areas of dust generation. Dust was not observed from examination of satellite retrievals (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite System) during six cloudless days of extreme emission. Estimated masses of emitted dust fractions were made from measured horizontal mass flux, sediment particle sizes, and areas of dust generation. Between April 2000 and June 2013, nearly 4 Tg/year of dust (particles < 63 μm) were emitted across the study area. Higher rates (about 7 Tg/year) were estimated following the December 2010 Mojave River flood that deposited sediment across the lake basin. Within the Mojave and Great Basin deserts of western North America, many settings akin to those at Soda Lake similarly emit dust that is rarely detected in satellite retrievals, implying that local and regional dust emissions from western North America are far underestimated and that, by extension to relatively small dust‐source areas across all drylands, global dust emissions may also be greatly underestimated.

Techno–ecological synergies of solar energy for global sustainability

“…Despite an emphasis on enumerating GHG emissions by life-cycle analysis and related methods, a diverse suite of mass and energy flows-including nitrogen, heat, water-underpin the supply of ecosystem goods and services. For example, the washing of photovoltaic (PV) solar energy panels to reduce soiling and wetting of disturbed soils to mitigate dust is dependent on the supply of water from sources like rivers, lakes, and aquifers within an ecosystem 17 . Enumeration of the supply of ecosystem goods and services includes an understanding of the complex feedbacks and linkages that regulate a given supply.…”

Major Changes in Extreme Dust Events Dynamics Over the Arabian Peninsula During 2003–2017 Driven by Atmospheric Conditions

“…Dust is the dominant aerosol species by mass in the Earth's atmosphere, and emissions from the deserts and arid regions across the globe range between 1,000 and 4,000 Tg yr −1 annually (e.g., Huneeus et al., 2011; Urban et al., 2018). Dust aerosols play an important role in the Earth's climate dynamics (e.g., Kok et al., 2018; Sokolik et al., 2001), affecting the Earth's radiative balance, and also rainfall (Shepherd et al., 2016).…”

Downslope Winds and Dust Storms in the Salton Basin

“…Description is the same as for Figure 11 except that the hourly temperature and wind speeds correspond to averages over the 10 dust events indicated in Table 1. clear sky scenes. For these cases I cannot discount the possibility that there were large dust events in the Basin, but that they simply were not apparent via the available satellite imagery, a situation which has been demonstrated further north in the Mojave (Urban et al 2018).…”