Dust Heterogeneous Reactions during Long-Range Transport of a Severe Dust Storm in May 2017 over East Asia

Abstract

Dust aerosol has important climate and environmental effects, which could be changed by internally mixing with anthropogenic aerosol as a result of heterogeneous reactions; however, the importance of these reactions is not fully understood yet. In this study, synergetic observations and an air quality model were used to analyze the transport of a severe dust storm and its impacts on nitrate and sulfate levels over East Asia between 3 and 11 May 2017. The model successfully reproduced the occurrence and transport of the dust storm compared to dust RGB imageries of the Himawari-8 satellite and dust extinction coefficients observed by LIDAR. The model also reasonably simulated the variations of observed nitrate and sulfate concentrations, and the results indicated that the dust heterogeneous reactions were dominant pathways for nitrate formation, but they had limited contribution for sulfate in both fine and coarse mode in Fukuoka, Japan. Dust nitrate formed rapidly after leaving China, and the highest period-averaged concentration of dust nitrate (>5 μg m−3) was shown over the Yellow Sea. Based on model results; we found that the mass ratio of dust nitrate to dust aerosol could reach 10% over the Pacific Ocean. Our results confirmed the importance of heterogeneous reactions on compositions of dust particles.

Keywords

• mineral dust
• heterogeneous reaction
• acid uptake
• himawari-8
• lidar
• naqpms