Characterization of Asian Dust during ACE-Asia☆
Introduction
Several major outbreaks of atmospheric dust occurred during ACE-Asia, the Asian Pacific Regional Aerosol Characterization Experiment (Huebert et al., 2003), and these dust storms facilitated studies of the chemistry, radiative properties, and climatic effects of mineral dust and other types of aerosol particles (hereinafter simply “aerosols”). Indeed, the numbers of studies and programs focusing on the Asian aerosol have grown rapidly over the past 20 to 30 years as the importance of Asian outflow for regional climate and global biogeochemical cycles has become increasingly apparent.
This heightened interest in the Asian aerosol has been paralleled by advances in the methods used for characterizing aerosol properties and modeling the effects of aerosols on Earth systems. Despite these positive developments, the size of the region, the diversity of sources, and the complexity of the chemical and physical processes involved make it difficult to determine the extent to which human activities have perturbed the climate system. An equal if not greater challenge lies in developing a framework for reliably predicting how future climates may be affected by human activities and in developing the modeling tools needed to do so.
With recognition of these needs, a major objective for ACE-Asia was to strengthen the underpinnings of models being developed to predict the climatic responses to large-scale changes in aerosol composition and loadings over Asia. Therefore, one main goal of this summary is to bring together measurements of dust aerosol properties with modeling results and to highlight what was learned about the linkages between atmospheric dust and climate. The results presented here have been contributed by a group of collaborators who have conducted both field and modeling studies for the program. There are several limitations to the scope of this review that will soon become apparent to the reader, however. In particular, we do not consider in detail the information obtained from a network of lidars (the Asian Dust Network or ADNet, Shimizu et al., 2004) nor do we consider the information obtained from satellites (e.g., Wang et al., 2003).
While the focus of this paper is on the Asia/Pacific region, the results presented have global implications, not only because Asia is such a large dust source, but also because the approaches needed for assessing dust/chemistry/climate relationships transcend geographical region. Nevertheless, comparisons of results from ACE-Asia with studies in other regions have uncovered some basic differences in the properties of dust as highlighted below. Also relevant to assessing the broader human impacts on the dust cycle are the extensive studies of Chinese loess/paleoclimate relationships (Zhang, 1984, Liu et al., 1985, An et al., 1990, Porter, 2001) and the observations of Asian dust storm frequencies made during the last century (e.g., Sun et al., 2001, Natsagdorj et al., 2003, Zhang et al., 2003a, Zhang et al., 2003b). The former provide some perspective on the dust–climate interactions that operated before the Earth systems became perturbed by human activities. The more recent observations, on the other hand, are a first step for assessing how the changes in life-style and land-use practices occurring in Asia have affected the production of Asian dust. Both types of assessments have clear implications for other dust-producing regions.
Section snippets
Scientific uncertainties, issues, and questions
As interest has grown in the potential for climate forcing by aerosols, a seminal paper by Charlson et al. (1992) and a report issued shortly thereafter (IPCC, 1994) drew attention to the large uncertainties in the aerosols' direct radiative effects and the even larger uncertainties in the aerosols' indirect effects, i.e., those involving the reflectivity, lifetimes, precipitability, and coverage of clouds. The ACE investigations were organized through the International Global Atmospheric
Research strategies and operations
Several key elements of the ACE-Asia strategy for quantifying the relationships between aerosols and their climatic impacts were the efforts to (1) characterize the spatial and temporal patterns in aerosol properties, (2) determine how the aerosol composition and properties vary with altitude, and (3) intercalibrate and intercompare measurements among platforms (Huebert et al., 2003). Another important component of the strategy was to involve chemical transport modelers in the planning,
Results and discussion
Most fortuitously, several major dust events occurred during the ACE-Asia IOP. One event, which blanketed much of eastern Asia from about April 5 to 15, 2001, was particularly noteworthy because it was one of the most severe dust storms in recent years, even being dubbed “The Perfect Dust Storm” (PDS, e.g., Holden, 2001). Numerical analysis performed with a dust-aerosol model (Liu et al., 2003a, Liu et al., 2003b) showed that cyclones in Mongolia and cold fronts accompanying low pressure
Concluding remarks
More than sixty papers resulting from studies conducted as part of ACE-Asia have been published in the Journal of Geophysical research alone, and clearly the summaries of results presented here could not begin to cover all of the mineral dust research done for the program. Despite these limitations, the results presented above show how the aerosol concentrations change over time and how they vary in 3-dimensions. The summaries provide information on dust budgets and fluxes and also highlight
Acknowledgments
The authors are pleased to acknowledge the contributions of the innumerable scientists and support personnel who contributed to the overall success of the ACE-Asia program but who unfortunately cannot be individually recognized here. Financial support for ACE-Asia was provided by at least thirty-five groups from eight different countries, and that generous support is a pleasure to acknowledge as is the collaborative spirit of all ACE-Asia investigators. This paper is a contribution to the
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Note: the author list is arranged in the sequence their contributions were received.