News Archive
- February 2025:
new publication:
Mu, F., Fiedler, S. How much do atmospheric depressions and Mongolian cyclones contribute to spring dust activities in East Asia?. npj Clim Atmos Sci 8, 51 (2025).
Summary:
Severe East Asian dust storms occur in spring due to dust-emitting winds in the Gobi Desert associated with Mongolian cyclones. The present study performs the first quantitative assessment of the contributions of Mongolian cyclones to springtime dust activity in East Asia, based on multiple reanalyses and observational datasets for 2001鈥�2022. Atmospheric depressions dominate dust activities in Northern China, explaining ~90鈥�92% of the total dust emissions in the Gobi Desert and ~88鈥�93% of the dust aerosol optical depth (蟿) downwind, depending on the dataset. Mongolian cyclones, defined as long-living and mobile atmospheric depressions, explain almost half (~34鈥�47%) of the Gobi鈥檚 total dust emissions and 蟿 downwind, and are the primary driver of high-impact dust storms. The number of Mongolian cyclones, along with the dust activity, has decreased since 2001, with a spatial pattern of the dust emission trend that is consistent with the northward shift of cyclone tracks.
Co-occurrence of Mongolian cyclones and East Asian dust storms in springtime. Show are (a) the number of spring super dust storms and dust storms (including super dust storms) over China and the maximum peak winds of the associated Mongolian cyclone in D2 during individual dust storms as reported by peer-reviewed publications from 2001 to 2022, (b, c) Hovmo虉ller plot of monthly mean dust emission flux anomalies, normalized by the climatological standard deviation, associated with Mongolian cyclones from DuEM (2001鈥�2017) and MERRA-2 (2001鈥�2022) reanalysis, and (d) mean position (latitude) of Mongolian cyclones center per spring and their trends from 2001 to 2022. The occurrences of dust storms are obtained from the China Meteorological Administration measured by in-situ observations of atmospheric visibility across China and validated against past studies addressing the dust storm dynamics. The dust storm event in 2010 is associated with the defined atmospheric depressions with a lifetime of less than 24 h, marked with +. The black dashed line in (c) represents the latitude at 104.5掳E and 41掳N, located in northern China near the border with Mongolia. (*) in (d) indicates that the statistical significance exceeds the 90% confidence level.
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