Lidar measurements of Asian dust storms and dust cloud interactions

Dust Bowl 3 Drought and dust storms

A farmer and his two sons during a dust storm in Cimarron County, Oklahoma, 1936, Photo: Arthur Rothstein The Dust Bowl, or the Dirty Thirties, was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological and agricultural damage to American and Canadian prairie lands in the 1930s, particularly in 1934 and 1936. The phenomenon was caused by severe drought coupled with decades of extensive farming...

Dust storms and ephemeral lakes

In drylands, both dust storms and ephemeral salt lakes (playas) are common. Observations using remote sensing and ground studies have shown that these playas can be major sources of saline dust storms. Some basins have recently become desiccated as a result of water abstraction by humans, and these have become significant sources of dust. The timing and amounts of dust emissions depends on such...

Northeast Asian dust storms: Real-time numerical prediction and validation

[1] This study is concerned with the quantitative prediction of dust storms in real time. An integrated wind erosion modeling system is used for 24-, 48-, and 72-hour forecasts of northeast Asian dust events for March and April 2002. The predictions are validated with synoptic records from the meteorological network and dust concentration measurements at 12 stations in China, Japan, and Korea. ...

Dust Storms: Schwartz's Response

Coarse Particles and Dust Storm Mortality In a paper titled "Episodes of High Coarse Partide Concentrations Are Not Associated with Increased Mortality," Schwartz et al. (1) concluded that "coarse particles from windblown dust are not associated with mortality risk." The authors seem to have overlooked the medical literature on the health effects of the historic U.S. dust storms of the dust bow...

Multiwavelength and polarization lidar measurements of Asian dust layers over Tsukuba, Japan: a case study