An Interactive Website for Resource Sharing and Discussion

On April 15th, 1998, a dust storm in Western China has produced a huge atmospheric dust cloud that was transported across the Pacific Ocean and caused elevated aerosol concentrations over much of the Pacific Coast of North America.

This interactive website was set up to facilitate spontaneous communication, data sharing, and collaboration regarding this unusual event. The community is encouraged to register with the People page, submit web links to relevent reports, data, images, and tools in the Resources section and to partipate in the general Forum discussion, or to comment on specific resources.

Bulletins

May 3,98: Is the China Syndrome over? Probably. May 4,98: U.of Washington group measured the dust size distribution over Olympic Penisula, WA. May 4,98: Sun photometer monitoring of the dust AOT at Reno, NV by Desert Research Institute. May 5,98: Animation of cloud-tracked winds during the dust transport across the Northeast Pacific by U.of Wisconsin.




The Dust Event

The main dust storm begun in the western Chinese province Xinjiang on April 15, 1998, right on time for the East-Asian dust season. However, from the onset, this was as unusually intense storm. CNN reported that 12 people were missing in the intense storm illustrated in the CNN video clip.The origin of the wind blown dust appears to be the Tarim Pendi desert. The dense yellow dust cloud was first detected on April 16th by routine daily visual examination of the SeaWiFS satellite sensor images for 'interesting' aerosol pattern. By April 20, the intense elongated dust cloud covered a 1000 mile stretch of the east coast of China. In the SeaWiFS image the yellow dust cloud is clearly distinguishable from the white water clouds.


Over the ocean, the dust appeared as a yellow dye, marking its own location every day (left image). The movement of the wind-blown dust from western China through the northern Pacific Ocean to North America is shown in the sequential browse SeaWiFS images (middle image). The approximate outlines of the dust plume at any given day is highlighted by the hand drawn, red markings. As the dust cloud approached North America, it became visible on the GOES-9 satellite and attracted the attention of keen observers.


Following swift and largely rain-free transport across the Pacific between April 21 and April 25, 1998, the dust plume hit the Pacific Coast from California to British Colombia. At that point, the dust plume appears to have split, one branch heading southward along the California coast and another branch continuing eastward across the Canadian Rockies. The shape of the dust plume over the northwestern US and southwestern Canada is shown in the GOES 10 image on April 27. Throughout the Pacific Coast, intense haze was reported and high ground-level PM concentrations were measured over Vancouver, Washington, Oregon, Idaho and N. California.