Mongolia dust transport across borders under the background of global warming

Abstract

Mongolia's ecosystem has suffered severe damage due to factors such as global warming, population growth, and land management change. In this regard, Mongolia's dust (MD) events have significantly impacted the social and economic development of both local and surrounding areas. The transport of MD significantly impacts the dust concentrations in China, and should not be ignored. To address this issue, we conducted a study on the MD emission and its contribution to East Asia using the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled to Chemistry (WRF-Chem) model coupled with dynamic dust sources. The results shows that the WRF-Chem model with dynamic dust source effectively improves numerical simulations. The spatiotemporal distribution of simulated aerosol optical depth (AOD) is in good agreement with the observations. Compared to March, scarcer snow cover and higher surface temperature in April and May lead to higher dust source function and more dust emission flux. Moreover, we further demonstrated the impact of MD contribution on dust concentration over East Asia. Specifically, MD is responsible for approximately 25% of dust emissions, 23.1% of dust loading and 14.1% of dust transport flux at 500 hPa in the spring over East Asia. This study not only fills a scientific gap in understanding MD emissions but also enhances prediction and early warning capabilities for dust storms in China.