Comprehensive Analysis of a Dust Storm by a Lidar Network Combined With Multiple Data

Abstract

In order to improve the accuracy of dust storm prediction and reduce the damage and losses by a dust storm event, it is necessary to conduct an in-depth study on the same. The data of the national air quality stations, backward trajectories generated by the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory model (HYSPLIT), and the lidar network data from Wuwei, Baiyin, and Dingxi were used to study a large-scale dust storm event that occurred from 12 to 14 May 2019. This study explores the cause of the dust storm and physical characteristics of dust aerosols in three-dimensional space, as well as its impact on air quality. Results show that the dust storm was caused by the eastward movement of the East Asian trough and affected most cities in northern China from northwest to southeast. Consequently, the air quality deteriorated seriously, especially over the Hexi Corridor. The hourly peak concentrations of PM10 in Wuwei and Baiyin were close to 3,000 μg·m−3. The observations from the lidar network show that the dust intensities were similar at different cities, and their extinction coefficients were close. However, the depolarization ratio varied with sources and the physical characteristics of dust particles. According to the simulation results of extinction coefficients and particle concentrations, due to the impact of dust transported at high altitudes, the concentration of particles in Dingxi did not decrease with the increase in altitude. The particle concentrations from ground-based monitoring were lower than those of Baiyin and Wuwei, while particle concentrations above 0.3 km were higher than those of Baiyin and Wuwei.