Episode Simulation of Asian Dust Storms with an Air Quality Modeling System

A dust deflation module was developed and coupled with the air quality modeling system RAMS-CMAQ to simultaneously treat all the major tropospheric aerosols（i.e.,organic and black carbons,sulfate,nitrate, ammonia,soil dust,and sea salt）.Then the coupled system was applied to East Asia to simulate Asian dust aerosol generation,transport and dry/wet removal processes during 14-25 March 2002 when two strong dust storms occurred consecutively.To evaluate model performance and to analyze the observed features of dust aerosols over the East Asian region,model results were compared to concentrations of suspended particulate matter of 10μm or less(PM;;1-h intervals) at four remote Japanese stations and daily air pollution index （API） values for PM;at four large Chinese cities.The modeled values were generally in good agreement with observed data,and the model reasonably reproduced two dust storm outbreaks and generally predicted the dust onset and cessation times at each observation site.In addition,hourly averaged values of aerosol optical thickness（AOT） were calculated and compared with observations at four Aerosol Robotic Network （AERONET） stations to assess the model’s capability of estimating dust aerosol column burden.Analysis shows that modeled and observed AOT values were generally comparable and that the contribution of dust aerosols to AOT was significant only with regard to their source regions and their transport paths.

Model analysis of aerosol optical depth distributions over East Asia

Based on simulated major aerosol concentrations (e.g., sulfate, nitrate, ammonium, organic carbon, black carbon, and sea salt) over East Asia during the year 2005 by using the Multi-scale Air Quality modeling system (RAMS-CMAQ), the aerosol optical depth (AOD) was calculated by the reconstruction mass-extinction method and then analyzed to explore its characteristics in temporal-spatial distributions. For evaluating the model performances, simulated AOD values were compared against observations at stations of the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) and the Chinese Sun Hazemeter Network (CSHNET). The comparison shows that the model can well reproduce observed temporal and spatial features of AOD, especially in natural en- vironment. However, the simulated AOD values are underestimated over urban and suburban regions with dense human activities. Analysis of simulation results indicates that AOD varies significantly in time and space, and generally, AOD values are lower in summer and higher in winter. Excluding the contribution from soil dust aerosols, high AOD values (over 0.8) are found over the Sichuan Basin, South China, and Central China in several months, while low values (less than 0.2) are over northern and western areas of East Asia and southern sea regions. Analysis also shows that aerosols such as sulfate, nitrate, and ammonium are main contributors to AOD in East Asia, and their contributions are over 80% in most high AOD areas, while black carbon aerosols play an important role in northern China where dense human activities exist, especially in the winter time.