Characteristics of the severe March 2021 Gobi Desert dust storm and its impact on air pollution in China

As the main source of dust in Asia, China often suffers from dust events. The temporal and spatial characteristics of dust events change with the variations of geography, climate and human activities. Based on the criteria of selecting dust events proposed recently by the China Environmental Monitoring Station, the hourly concentration of PM10 and PM2.5 of 336 cities in China from 2015 to 2020 were used to study the temporal and spatial characteristics of dust events more accurately and objectively. The results showed that all of the dust events in China clearly decreased, but the strong dust events did not decrease. There were 334 cities that had dust events except Shenzhen and Dongguan, 299 cities were seriously polluted due to dust events, 134 cities encountered dust level III and 56 cities encountered dust level IV. The high frequencies of dust events were mainly distributed in Northern China, especially in Northwest China. The dust contribution of PM10 to the cities in Northwest China was more than 10% and about 5–10% for PM2.5. The most likely month for dust was May. The starting time of dust was bimodally distributed, and the most common starting time was 10:00–11:00 BJT, followed by 22:00–23:00 BJT. According to the PSCF (Potential Source Contribution Function) results, the dust potential source contribution of different cities mainly came from the northwest, and was mainly affected by Mongolia in addition to the local dust in China. In addition, Beijing was obviously affected by dust recirculation. This study is of great significance to the improvement of the forecast of dust weather and the warning of heavy pollution caused by dust events.

Characteristics of Dust Events in China from 2015 to 2020

Classification and sources of extremely severe sandstorms mixed with haze pollution in Beijing.

Impacts of dust events on chemical characterization and associated source contributions of atmospheric particulate matter in northern China.

Dust storms have occurred frequently in northwest China and can dramatically reduce visibility and exacerbate air quality in downwind regions through long-range transport. In order to study the distribution characteristics of dust particles sizes, structures and concentrations in the process of dust storm, especially for the vertical distributions, the multi-observation platform composed of six Lidars and nine aerosol analytical instruments is first used to detect a severe dust storm event, which occurred in Northwest China on 3 May 2020. As a strong weather system process, the dust storm has achieved high intensity and wide range. When the intensity of a dust storm is at its strongest, the ratios of PM2.5 (particulate matter with diameter < 2.5 µm) and PM10 (particulate matter with diameter < 10 µm) (PM2.5/PM10) in cities examined were less than 0.2 and the extinction coefficients became greater than 1 km−1 based on Lidar observations. In addition, the growth rates of PM2.5 were higher than that of PM10. The dust particles mainly concentrated at heights of 2 km, after being transported about 200–300 km, vertical height increased by 1–2 km. Meanwhile, the dust concentration decreased markedly. Furthermore, the depolarization ratio showed that dust in the Tengger Desert was dominated by spherical particles. The linear relationships between 532 nm extinction coefficient and the concentration of PM2.5 and PM10 were found firstly and their R2 were 0.706 to 0.987. Our results could give more information for the physical schemes to simulate dust storms in specific models, which could improve the forecast of dust storms.

Detection of a Dust Storm in 2020 by a Multi-Observation Platform over the Northwest China

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Characteristics of Dust Events in China from 2015 to 2020

Detection of a Dust Storm in 2020 by a Multi-Observation Platform over the Northwest China