Hyperfine Observation and Forecasting of the Sandstorm Intrusion Process

Abstract

The temporal and spatial resolutions of spaceborne lidar are insufficient, and traditional 1064-/532-/355-nm wavelength lidar devices have difficulty in performing horizontal observations in urban areas due to the eye safety problems. Therefore, there is no mature method of horizontal pollution observation that satisfies hyperfine environmental management and control in urban areas. Recently, 1.5- <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> eye-safe lidars were used to build a Jinan quantum lidar network (JQLN), which can observe horizontal aerosol pollution with a radius of 6 km and with high spatial and temporal resolutions of 15 m and 8 min, respectively. In this study, sudden particulate matter (PM) pollution occurred in Jinan from February 21 to 22, 2021. Spaceborne lidar was used to perform a large-scale analysis, and the detailed transport path of pollution was measured by lidar. Pollution transport path forecasting within half an hour and 180 km2 was performed. The forecasting results were in good agreement with the 11 national monitoring stations (NMSs) distributed within the region. The forecasting errors were within minutes and hundreds of meters, and the maximum errors of the pollution arrival time and distribution distance were less than 3 min and 200 m, respectively. This study and the JQLN are promising methods for hyperfine environmental management and control in urban areas.