A Case Study of a Typical Dust Storm Event over the Loess Plateau of Northwest China

Enhanced observational meteorological elements,energy fluxes,and the concentration of dust aerosols collected from the Semi-Arid Climate Observatory and Laboratory(SACOL) during a typical dust storm period in March 2010 at Lanzhou were used in this paper to investigate the impact of dust aerosols on near surface atmospheric variables and energy budgets.The results show that the entire dust storm event was associated with high wind velocities and decreasing air pressure,and the air changed from cold and wet to warm and dry and then recovered to its initial state.The response of energy fluxes occurred behind meteorological elements.At high dust concentration periods,the net radiation was significantly less in the daytime and higher at night,while the heat fluxes displayed the same trend,indicating the weakening of the land-atmosphere energy exchange.The results can be used to provide verification for numerical model results in semi-arid areas.

A Case Study of the Impacts of Dust Aerosols on Surface Atmospheric Variables and Energy Budgets in a Semi-Arid Region of China

The authors present a case study investigating the impacts of dust aerosols on surface atmospheric variables and energy budgets in a semi-arid region of China. Enhanced observational meteorological data, radiative fluxes, near-surface heat fluxes, and concentrations of dust aerosols were collected from Tongyu station, one of the reference sites of the International Coordinated Energy and Water Cycle Observations Project (CEOP), during a typical dust storm event in June 2006. A comprehensive analysis of these data show that in this semi-arid area, higher wind velocities and a continuously reduced air pressure were identified during the dust storm period. Dust storm events are usually associated with low relative humidity weather conditions, which result in low latent heat flux values. Dust aerosols suspended in the air decrease the net radiation, mainly by reducing the direct solar radiation reaching the land surface. This reduction in net radiation results in a decrease in soil temperatures at a depth of 2 cm. The combination of increased air temperature and decreased soil temperature strengthens the energy exchange of the atmosphere-earth system, increasing the surface sensible heat flux. After the dust storm event, the atmosphere was dominated by higher pressures and was relatively wet and cold. Net radiation and latent heat flux show an evident increase, while the surface sensible heat flux shows a clear decrease.