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http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/lidar/asian_dust.htm
I'm in the process of writing a short paper for the JGR special issue which will discuss this data along with concurrent AOT measurements and associated transport modeling. My co-authors in this are Rob Frouin at Scripps and Doug Westphal at NRL Monterey.
In the near future I will be contacting the community to submit their existing papers, abstracts etc. to the Reports section of the Dust Website. I recognize that this exchange needs to happen within the next week or two.
Best Regards, Diana Lutz Editor, Muse
I would like to inform you about the organization of Network observation of Asian dust (Kosa) in Japan with ground-based instruments: lidar, skyradiometer, optical particle counter and etc. We have started this campaign named LINK-J from the spring of 1997. Recently we are reconstructing our web. page in English in the following site: http://info.nies.go.jp:8094/kosapub/ You will find some images and results of the observations. We are hoping to communicate and exchange about Asian dust events in world wide.
Best regards, spokesman of LINK-J: T. Murayama
Regarding the Asian dustcloud project--the particulate data is looking like dust from Asia may have impacted California during prior years as well as this year, though not as heavily as this year.
Do you know of anyone to contact for satellite images or other atmospheric data from prior years which would be relevant to this?
Specifically, samples taken on April 14, 1994; May 1, 1993; and February 23, 1991 are similar to the April 29, 1998 samples in several respects.
Dear Colleagues,
My name is Sadayo YABUKI, senior researcher of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, Japan. My concern is isotope geochemistry. The Dust Storm Research Group had a symposium entitled "Aeolian dust originated from inland Asia" at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), Wako, Saitama, Japan, on June 26, 1997. Researchers of various scientific fields concerned with aeolian dust participated in the discussion. Recently a special issue of Journal of Arid Land Studies (Japan) was published by the Japanese Association for Arid Land Studies. Articles included in the special issue are as follows. Unfortunately only some of the articles are written in English, but all articles have English abstracts.
Tetsuya TAKEMI (1997): The 5 May 1993 Dust Storm over the Northwestern China and the Environmental Condition of Its Development, J.A.L.S. , 7-2, 87-96 (Japanese) takemi@bouhuu.dpri.kyoto-u.ac.jp
Masao MIKAMI (1997): Duststorm Observed in the Southern Edge of Taklimakan Desert, J.A.L.S. , 7-2, 97-106 (Japanese) mmikami@mri-jma.go.jp
Kenji KAI, Toshikatsu TAKASUGI and Hajime NAKAMUNA (1997): Long Range Transport of the Asian Duststorm (Kosa) Particles Originated from the Taklamakan Desert, J.A.L.S. , 7-2, 107-117 (Japanese) kai@info.human.nagoya-u.ac.jp
Yutaka OBINATA, Fumitake YANAGISAWA, Takashi KOTANI and Akira UEDA (1997): Sulfur Isotope Ratio of Non-sea-salt Sulfate in Dry Deposition in Tsuruoka and Yamagata, Yamagata Prefecture, Japan, J.A.L.S. , 7-2, 119-126 (Japanese) sj340@kdeve.kj.yamagata-u.ac.jp
Sadayo YABUKI, Akihiko OKADA, Akira UEDA, Qing CHANG and Zi-Li FAN (1997): Sulfur Isotope Study of Salt Materials in Saline Lands and Salt Deposits around the Desert Areas in Xinjiang, China, J.A.L.S. , 7-2, 127-138 (English) syabuki@postman.riken.go.jp
Masatoshi HONDA and Hiroshi SHIMIZU (1997): Study of Transport Mechanism of Aeolian Sediments from the Taklimakan Desert: Implication of Grain-Size Distribution and Major-Element Comoposition, J.A.L.S. , 7-2, 139-146 (English) honda@sci.kumamoto-u.ac.jp
Soung-An Kwon, Yasunobu IWASAKA, Katsuji MATSUNAGA and Takashi SHIBATA (1997): Long Rang Transport of Kosa Aerosol Measured by Lidar in Spring 1994, J.A.L.S. , 7-2, 147-155 (Japanese) kwon@stelab.nagoya-u.ac.jp
Yasunobu IWASAKA et al. (1997): Aerosol Particles in the Asian Continental Atmosphere: Balloon-borne, Aircraft-borne, and Lidar Measurements in Japan and China, J.A.L.S. , 7-2, 157-167 (English) iwasaka@stelab.nagoya-u.ac.jp
If you are interested in these articles, please contact with me or each author by e-mail.
Sadayo YABUKI The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198 JAPAN Tel:+81-48-467-9360 Fax:+81-48-462-4654 E-mail:syabuki@postman.riken.go.jp
Thanks for the "heads up".
Russ Schnell Director, MLO
One of the fascinating possibilities with this 'project' is that we may be able to see each others work as it evolves, rather then waiting for the publication of the final pieces and then doing the 'integration' afterwards. If we have the willingness to share our respective results and ideas pieces early (incomplete and unfinished as they may be), we could interact much more synergistically by influencing each others way of thinking from the onset of the analysis rather then after it is done. It has been said that now days most of the innovation is generated at the interfaces of different sciences. I for one would love to be influenced by the professional dirt scitetists :).
I am enjoying the Asian Dust web page and look forward to working with some of the high radiometric/new GOES images in our change detection work to help map the distribution and amounts of dust in this event.
It's great to find out about this web site. I too have been sort of following this dust event for the last few weeks, and just recently have been made aware of this site. As the "dust man" in my group, I was made aware of this event by Richard Peterson, Dept. Chairman at Texas Tech, who had seen the CNN footage: the same day, I received the following email message from my Russian colleague Vladimir Smirnov:
"> > > Dear Thomas, > > > Do you know about dust storm that started > > > yesterday at Central China. So far, our TV news channel has showed the large > > > dust fallout at Russian forest city Arseniev near Vladivostok."
Since then, I've been trying to track down data, and immediately got in touch with my colleague Justin Wilkinson, at NASA in Houston- he's the guy who tells the Space Shuttle astronauts when there are interesting geological phenomena which they should photograph. I'll leave it for him to chip in with the details, but he thinks that the Shuttle astronauts may have got both still photos and videos of the dust from several points. Tom Gill
If you have trouble web-posting it, we can help, send me e-mail. Thanks.
The last time they ran the lidar was 28 April, and there might have been a hint of an aerosol layer (although Minnesota and southern Canada has had some fires this past week)...more on this when they get back to me after analyzing their data...
If so, I wonder if we can tell the difference between smoke from these burns and Chinese dust and estimate where the smoke went?
If we are able to get any details on how much was burned and when and where, I'll post the information here.
The dust cloud (if it's still thick enough) displays a signature when a "split window" difference product is made using GOES-9 10.7 and 12.0 micron IR imagery. However, this signature is more difficult to detect over certain land types than it is over the oceans.
The current air stagnation event and haziness in eastern Washington is likely due to a little of both. At this point, it might be difficult to separate the two, but I'll take a look at some of today's GOES-9 imagery and see what I can discern...
So, what is the likelihood that the Asian dust is contributing? Without knowing much about these type of events, I would have thought that the dust would have been primarily at high altitudes (upper trop) to travel across the Pacific. If this were the case, then I would expect little or no contribution from the Asian dust. But talking with various airports, the PIREPS indicate that the top of our haze layer is about 10,000', with clear air above.
I'd appreciate anyone's "definitive" answer on this so that we can put the guessing to rest. Thanks,
Ron Miller
So I'd say the 10000 ft range is a good estimate for this dust layer. Some of the dust might have come as far as the Great Lakes region -- our sunsets in Wisconsin have had nice color the past few days!
Cheers,
Russ Schnell
I arrived to work this morning after a few days in the eastern Sierras to reports of reduced visibility and elevated PM10 measurements in much of California. This was being attributed to large-scale prescribed burns in Idaho, but it appears that the transported dust from China may have had a significant impact.
While driving through Owens Valley on the way to June Lakes on Sunday afternoon (April 26), I noticed a high whitish haze in the sky and reduced visibility of the Sierra-Nevada Mountains that did not appear to be related to local wind-blown dust (i.e., the common Owens Dry Lake dust) or moisture. This persisted for the two days I spent in the mountains.
Upon returning to southern California through the Cajon Pass late yesterday afternoon, I noticed that the visibility in the Los Angeles Basin was poor, as it often is here with a deep marine layer, but there was also more of a brown haze, typical of particulate or nitrogen dioxide air pollution.
Our ozone and NO2 measurements were relatively low yesterday, but several of our continuous PM10 samplers measured slightly elevated concentrations. Bill Wilson at the California Air Resources Board reported that many PM10 measurements throughout the state were above 50 ug/m3 for the 24-hour average. Today (April 29) was a particulate filter sampling day, so we could have better speciation of the particulates after the filters are analyzed (in about 1 month). Our continuous measurements look a little high again today and we have had a couple of calls from the public concerning the poor visibility.
During my previous employment, I was involved in the NASA Pacific Exploratory Mission (PEM-West-B) which studied the atmospheric chemistry of continental outflow from Asia. Too bad we didn't encounter something of this magnitude when we were flying instrumented aircraft in the Guam/ Hong Kong/Tokyo regions...
Is it possible that some of the Chinese dust has arrived here?
Forrest M. Mims III
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/misc/980407.html
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/misc/980216.html
It would be great to have you (and/or others from your group) participate in the discussion.
The Asian dust event that has just encountered our region will be of interest to many of these groups (I'm including those who operate surface sampling networks, since fallout into the PBL is a possibility).
We will be operating our lidar on an intensive basis in order to track the vertical extent of the plume and look forward to comparing our respective findings.
Do you happen to know how long we might expect this event to last?
