How the unparalleled dust storm over the Arabian Peninsula in May 2022 exacerbated the record-breaking heatwave in China in the ensuing summer

Abstract

Against the background of global warming, the increasing frequency of extreme high-temperature events (EHTF) in East China poses a huge threat to societal development and public health, and this was starkly demonstrated by the record-breaking EHTF observed in China in summer 2022. In this study, it was found that the record-breaking dust storm in May 2022 over the Arabian Peninsula accounted for approximately 65.2 % of the abnormal amplitude of July–August EHTF in China in the ensuing summer. Mechanistically, the dust aerosols of this heavy dust storm over the Arabian Peninsula were transferred downstream by the trade winds, whereupon they cooled the Indian Ocean via radiative processes and warmed the Tibetan Plateau through the so-called “snow-darkening effect”. These dust effects persisted until late summer and consequently strengthened the Indian summer monsoon and wetted the Indochina Peninsula. Subsequently, the associated enhanced and eastward-shifted South Asian high and westward-shifted western Pacific subtropical high contributed to the record-breaking EHTF in 2022. A physical–empirical forecast model was developed based on the preceding May dust signals over the Arabian Peninsula, and results showed that it skillfully predicts the interannual variability of July–August EHTF in East China during 2009–2022, and especially the record-breaking amplitude in 2022.