Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions
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10.5194/acpd-9-27021-2009
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/27021/2009/
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/27021/2009/acpd-9-27021-2009.html
http://www.atmos-chem-phys-discuss.net/9/27021/2009/acpd-9-27021-2009.pdf
27021
27062
2009-12-15
Dust storms come to central and southwestern China, too: implications from a major dust event in Chongqing
Q. Zhao
K. He
hekb@tsinghua.edu.cn
K. A. Rahn
Y. Ma
Y. Jia
F. Yang
F. Duan
Y. Lei
G. Chen
Y. Cheng
H. Liu
S. Wang
Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
Graduate School of Oceanography, University of Rhode Island, Narragansett, Rhode Island, USA
School of Earth Science, Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
School of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Chongqing Environmental Protection Bureau, Chongqing, China
Dust storms from major Asian sources are usually carried by
northwesterly or westerly winds over northern and southeastern
China to the Pacific Ocean. These pathways leave central and
southwestern China nearly free of incursions. But a strong
dust event on 5–6 May 2005 was captured in a 15-month series
of weekly filter samples of PM<sub>2.5</sub> at three sites in
Chongqing. It illustrated that desert dust can be transported
to this region, and sometimes strongly. Annual PM<sub>2.5</sub> and
dust were similar at the three sites, but higher than in
simultaneous samples in Beijing. High correlations of dust
concentration were found between the cites during spring,
indicating that Asian dust affects a broader swath of China
than is often realized. During the event, the concentrations
of mineral dust were high at all sites
(20–30 μg m<sup>−3</sup>; 15%–20% of PM<sub>2.5</sub> in
Chongqing, and 15 μg m<sup>−3</sup>; 20%–30% of
PM<sub>2.5</sub> in Beijing), and were part of a broader spring
maximum. The proportions of crustal elements and
pollution-derived components such as Pb, SO<sub>4</sub><sup>2−</sup>, and
organic carbon indicated that the sources for this dust
differed from Beijing. The dust was considerably enriched in
Ca and Mg, characteristic of western deserts, whereas
Beijing's dust had the lower Ca and Mg of eastern
deserts. This observation agrees with synoptic patterns and
back-trajectories. Driven by a cold air outbreak from the
northwest, dust from the western Gobi Desert was transported
at lower altitudes (<2 km above ground level), while dust
from the Takla Makan Desert was transported to Chongqing at
higher altitudes. Desert dust can also be important to wide
areas of China during the cold season, since almost all the
weekly dust peaks in the two cities coincided with extensive
dust emissions in source regions. These findings collectively
suggest that the amount of Asian-dust in China has been
underestimated both spatially and temporally, and that
transported alkaline dust can even be mitigating the effects
of acidic deposition in southern China.
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