Intersecting artistic tradition in the Tarim Basin: A painted wooden panel from Kizil (Kucha, Xinjiang)

Simulated regional transport structures and budgets of dust aerosols during a typical springtime dust storm in the Tarim Basin, Northwest China

Basing on the radiosonde observations in the spring and summer during 2016–2017, an anomalous warm atmospheric layer is verified and the contribution of suspended dusts over the Tarim Basin (TB) is quantified. The result indicates a warm atmospheric layer between 300 hPa and 500 hPa with an average intensity of 2.53 K and 1.39 K in the spring and summer, respectively. Over the TB, where the world’s second largest moving desert, the Taklimakan Desert (TD) is distributed, large amounts of dust particles are emitted from the TD and suspended over the TB. Using the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) data, we found the dusts can be lifted to the upper atmospheric layer between 2.5 and 5.5 km above mean sea level over the TB. Consequently, the suspended dusts can exert a maximum heating effect of approximately +0.45 K and +0.25 K in spring and summer, respectively. The contribution of dust heating to the anomalous warm atmospheric layer over the TB is 13.77 % and 10.25 % in spring and summer, respectively. In view of the topographical feature, the TB is adjacent to the Tibetan Plateau (TP) which acts as an elevated heat source in spring and summer. The warm atmospheric layer over the TB seems a northward extension of Tibet heat source, the concept of which is proposed in this study. Such a northward extension of the elevated heating by the Tibetan Plateau could induce some profound impacts on the regional climate, especially on the western section of the “Silk Road Economic Belt”, and therefore demands more attention.

Basing on the radiosonde observations in the spring and summer during 2016–2017, an anomalous warm atmospheric layer is verified and the contribution of suspended dusts over the Tarim Basin (TB) is quantified. The result indicates a warm atmospheric layer between 300 hPa and 500 hPa with an average intensity of 2.53 K and 1.39 K in the spring and summer, respectively. Over the TB, where the world’s second largest moving desert, the Taklimakan Desert (TD) is distributed, large amounts of dust particles are emitted from the TD and suspended over the TB. Using the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) data, we found the dusts can be lifted to the upper atmospheric layer between 2.5 and 5.5 km above mean sea level over the TB. Consequently, the suspended dusts can exert a maximum heating effect of approximately +0.45 K and +0.25 K in spring and summer, respectively. The contribution of dust heating to the anomalous warm atmospheric layer over the TB is 13.77 % and 10.25 % in spring and summer, respectively. In view of the topographical feature, the TB is adjacent to the Tibetan Plateau (TP) which acts as an elevated heat source in spring and summer. The warm atmospheric layer over the TB seems a northward extension of Tibet heat source, the concept of which is proposed in this study. Such a northward extension of the elevated heating by the Tibetan Plateau could induce some profound impacts on the regional climate, especially on the western section of the “Silk Road Economic Belt”, and therefore demands more attention.

Basing on the radiosonde observations in the spring and summer during 2016–2017, an anomalous warm atmospheric layer is verified and the contribution of suspended dusts over the Tarim Basin (TB) is quantified. The result indicates a warm atmospheric layer between 300 hPa and 500 hPa with an average intensity of 2.53 K and 1.39 K in the spring and summer, respectively. Over the TB, where the world’s second largest moving desert, the Taklimakan Desert (TD) is distributed, large amounts of dust particles are emitted from the TD and suspended over the TB. Using the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) data, we found the dusts can be lifted to the upper atmospheric layer between 2.5 and 5.5 km above mean sea level over the TB. Consequently, the suspended dusts can exert a maximum heating effect of approximately +0.45 K and +0.25 K in spring and summer, respectively. The contribution of dust heating to the anomalous warm atmospheric layer over the TB is 13.77 % and 10.25 % in spring and summer, respectively. In view of the topographical feature, the TB is adjacent to the Tibetan Plateau (TP) which acts as an elevated heat source in spring and summer. The warm atmospheric layer over the TB seems a northward extension of Tibet heat source, the concept of which is proposed in this study. Such a northward extension of the elevated heating by the Tibetan Plateau could induce some profound impacts on the regional climate, especially on the western section of the “Silk Road Economic Belt”, and therefore demands more attention.

<strong class="journal-contentHeaderColor">Abstract.</strong> Based on radiosonde observations from the spring and summer of 2016–2017, we verified the existence of an anomalously warm atmospheric layer and quantified the heat contribution of suspended dust over the Tarim Basin (TB) in northwest China. The atmospheric layer was identified between 300 and 500 <span class="inline-formula">hPa</span> over the TB, with 2.53 and 1.39 <span class="inline-formula">K</span> average intensities in spring and summer, respectively. The Taklimakan Desert (TD), i.e., the world's second-largest moving desert, is contained in the TB and emits large amounts of dust particles, which remain suspended over the TB. Using Cloud–Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) data, we found that dust can be lifted as high as the upper atmospheric layer, i.e., between 3.0 and 5.5 <span class="inline-formula">km</span> above mean sea level, over the TB. Consequently, suspended dust can exert a maximum heating effect of approximately <span class="inline-formula">+</span>0.45 and <span class="inline-formula">+</span>0.25 <span class="inline-formula">K</span> in spring and summer, respectively. The heat contributions of dust to the anomalously warm atmospheric layer over the TB in spring and summer were 13.77 % and 10.25 %, respectively. With regard to topographical feature, the TB is adjacent to the Tibetan Plateau (TP), which acts as an elevated heat source in spring and summer. The warm atmospheric layer over the TB seems a northward extension of Tibet heat source, the concept of which is proposed in this study. Such a northward "extension" of the elevated heating by the Tibetan Plateau may be a controlling factor of the regional climate, especially in the western section of the Silk Road Economic Belt, and therefore requires further investigations.

Modeling study on three-dimensional distribution of dust aerosols during a dust storm over the Tarim Basin, Northwest China

Abstract. Based on radiosonde observations from the spring and summer of 2016–2017, we verified the existence of an anomalously warm atmospheric layer and quantified the heat contribution of suspended dust over the Tarim Basin (TB) in northwest China. The atmospheric layer was identified between 300 and 500 hPa over the TB, with 2.53 and 1.39 K average intensities in spring and summer, respectively. The Taklimakan Desert (TD), i.e., the world's second-largest moving desert, is contained in the TB and emits large amounts of dust particles, which remain suspended over the TB. Using Cloud–Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) data, we found that dust can be lifted as high as the upper atmospheric layer, i.e., between 3.0 and 5.5 km above mean sea level, over the TB. Consequently, suspended dust can exert a maximum heating effect of approximately +0.45 and +0.25 K in spring and summer, respectively. The heat contributions of dust to the anomalously warm atmospheric layer over the TB in spring and summer were 13.77 % and 10.25 %, respectively. With regard to topographical feature, the TB is adjacent to the Tibetan Plateau (TP), which acts as an elevated heat source in spring and summer. The warm atmospheric layer over the TB seems a northward extension of Tibet heat source, the concept of which is proposed in this study. Such a northward “extension” of the elevated heating by the Tibetan Plateau may be a controlling factor of the regional climate, especially in the western section of the Silk Road Economic Belt, and therefore requires further investigations.

The Sr and Nd isotopic, rare earth element (REE) and major element compositions, together with mineral and grain‐size proportions, are reported for aeolian loess deposits and desert sands from several Chinese localities. The study was carried out in order to examine regional variations in the isotopic and geochemical features of these aeolian sediments, and to constrain the provenance of Chinese loess. Samples include loesses from the Tarim and Junggar basins and desert sands from the Taklimakan desert in north‐west China, loess from the Ordos area and desert sands from the Tengger and Mu‐us deserts in north‐central China, as well as loess and desert sands from the Naiman area, north‐east China. REE distributions show minimal variation among the Chinese loess deposits, whereas those for the desert sands show regional variations. New isotopic data document a latitudinal variation in Sr and Nd isotopic features for the loesses and desert sands. The Naiman and Junggar loesses have distinctly lower 87Sr/86Sr ratios and higher εNd(0) values than the loesses from the Tarim Basin, the Ordos area and the Loess Plateau. Among the desert sands, the Naiman samples have higher εNd(0) values than the Taklimakan, Tengger and Mu‐us samples. Isotopic data suggest that loesses of the Loess Plateau were supplied from the Tarim Basin loesses and Taklimakan Desert sand, and that the Naiman loesses were supplied from the Junggar Basin loesses. The latitudinal variation in the loesses and desert sands may be partly explained by isotopic variations reported previously for moraines from the Tianshan and west Kunlun Mountains, which are possible sources for the loesses and desert sands. These inferences on the provenance of the loesses and desert sands are consistent with the dust transport pattern over East Asia.

Palaeogeographic reconstructions of the Eocene-Oligocene Tarim Basin (NW China): Sedimentary response to late Eocene sea retreat

Reviewed by: The Dawn of Christian Art in Panel Paintings and Icons by Thomas F. Mathews Lee M. Jefferson Thomas F. Mathews with Norman E. Muller The Dawn of Christian Art in Panel Paintings and Icons Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum Publications, 2016 Pp. 256. $49.95. Thomas Mathews is a well-known name in the field of art history and early Christian studies. Mathews is most notable for his book, The Clash of Gods (Princeton, 1993), in which he upends certain orthodox views in art historical circles concerning the emergence of Christian art. Mathews maintained that the prior arguments of scholars such as Ernst Kitzinger and André Grabar were mistaken, going so far as calling their positions on the influence of imperial precedents upon Christian art the "Emperor Mystique." As influential as Mathews's rebuttal was for patristic scholars, he created a more rebellious status within the field of art history for his book, with some scholars diminishing his claims. However, Peter Brown, who reviewed Mathews's book for Art Bulletin (September 1995), argued that despite the criticism, "this is a book that needed to be written," as it rejected the view that early Christians needed a "head start" in creating a visual language based upon imperial art, and that it was a beginning to a long delayed conversation amongst historians, religionists, and art historians. Mathews included some updates and revisions in the second printing of The Clash of Gods in 1999, notably an additional chapter based upon his research of panel painting and icons, titled, "The Intimate Icon." In it Mathews argues that pagan practices of icon devotion and veneration undoubtedly influenced Christian visual practice. Mathews supported his syncretistic argument by suggesting that even facial types of images of Jesus were similar to icons of gods such as Serapis, and that images of Mary recall earlier images of Isis. The chapter seemed slightly disconnected from his prior entries in The Clash of Gods, but it indicated his current research interests. Since that publication, Mathews has continued to study early panel paintings, particularly findings from late antique Egypt. This volume published by the Getty Museum, which holds some of these panel paintings, is a culmination of Mathews's research in this area. Essentially, it is an expansion of the "Intimate Icon" chapter with some new findings. As it is published by a museum press, it is a large cloth volume filled with full-size color plates, probably relegated to "coffee table" book areas of bookstores. While this book will look lovely on any coffee table, the chapters therein are worthy of serious consideration, as Mathews continues his argument of the Christian adoption of pagan practices regarding images and their use. The focus of this book is an assembled corpus of fifty-nine panel paintings from Roman Egypt that both scholars (Norman Muller is a credited co-author) claim have gone unstudied by Egyptologists and early Christian scholars. The fifty-nine panel paintings, all wonderfully displayed in the book, are from various museums and collections, and all bear gods and/or goddesses as their subject matter. The paintings feature deities such as Serapis, Isis, and Harpocrates as well as several imperial figures, such as Septimius Severus in the guise of a god. Mathews and Muller have several goals in mind with this volume. One is to firm up the argument that Christian icons use the same visual language and practice [End Page 338] as their pagan predecessors, epitomized by these fifty-nine panel paintings. Other goals appear broader: to exhibit the connection between early Christian icon and panel painting use to medieval and Renaissance painting, and to illustrate pagan influence upon Marian icons. The first goal is the most successfully achieved in the book, while the latter two deserve more evidentiary support. The introduction presents the landscape of Mathews's argument and the Greek antecedents to Roman Egypt. Mathews also counters Paul Corby Finney's claim of a mid-third century advent of Christian art (from Finney's landmark text The Invisible God), because Finney selectively studied mural paintings and not icons or panel paintings (15). Mathews argues that given the evidence of panel paintings, the "dawn" of Christian...

As the largest inland oil-bearing basin in China, the Tarim Basin is a large-scale composite basin that has experienced a complex tectonic evolutionary history from the Ediacaran to the Cenozoic. From the Ediacaran to the Ordovician, the Tarim Basin was in an extensional tectonic environment. From the Silurian to the Devonian, the Tarim Block switched from the presence of passive margins to active margins along its northern and southern edges, eventually colliding with the North Kunlun Terrane in the Silurian. From the Carboniferous to the Triassic, the transition of the Tarim Block from an independent landmass to an internal component of the Eurasian Plate resulted from collisions with the Yili-Central Tianshan Terrane to the north during the Late Carboniferous and the Qiangtang Terrane to the south during the Triassic. From the Jurassic to the Paleogene, several unconformities developed because of the subduction of the Meso-Tethys oceanic plate during the Late Jurassic and the Neo-Tethys oceanic plate during the Paleogene. After the Neogene, as a rejuvenated foreland basin, the Tarim Basin was activated along its margins and became an intermountain basin due to the intense regional compression induced by the Indian Plate. Based on a seismic profile cross-section of the basin, we conclude that the extension and shortening in the profile reflects the block amalgamation history and the structural evolution of the Tarim Basin. The structural-sedimentary evolution of this basin is closely related to the movement of the peripheral plates.

The Taklimakan Desert (TD) is the largest desert in China located in the Tarim Basin (TB) in China’s arid region. This study is a review of the change in precipitation and its extremes since 1961 and the high-impact extreme precipitation events in 2012–2021, particularly in 2021, with a focus on the TD along with the surrounding oases and mountainous regions.The TB has experienced significantly warmer and wetter trends since 1961, and extreme rainfall has increased significantly in the TD and its surrounding areas during the 2000s. In the TB, the year 2021 was identified as the 4th warmest for 1961–2021, and was remembered for unprecedented extreme events. Three high-impact extreme events that occurred in 2021 are highlighted, including extreme heavy rainfall over Hetian in mid-June. The earliest extreme rainfall event occurred over North Bazhou in early spring, and the strongest heavy snowfall over Baicheng in April. In addition, we also discussed the underlying physical mechanisms of extreme events over the TB and proposed novel perspectives and unresolved questions on the sciences of heavy rainfall in arid regions. Our results provide a reference for the physical mechanism, attribution, and high-resolution modeling of extreme events.

The Tarim basin is the largest and least explored inland basin in China. The areal extent of the basin reaches 560,000 km2. The interior of the basin is mostly covered by the Takla Makan Desert, which is about 330,000 km2 in areal extent. The basin has become the object of special attention since China set aside first- and third-round onshore bidding blocks in the Tarim basin for foreign oil firms to explore. The Tarim basin is a polyhistory superimposed basin that has experienced seven evolutionary stages: (1) Sinian-Cambrian-Ordovician aulacogen stage, (2) Silurian-Devonian intracratonic depression stage, (3) Carboniferous marginal sea stage, (4) Permian rift basin stage, (5) Triassic-Jurassic foreland basin stage, (6) Cretaceous-Paleogene Neo-Tethys bay stage, and (7) Neogene-Pleistocene foreland and inland basin stage. Both the basin’s Paleozoic marine platform sequences and the Mesozoic-Cenozoic terrestrial fills are believed to contain substantial volumes of hydrocarbons. After recent years of exploration, nine oil and gas fields have been proven and 23 discoveries have been made in the Tabei, Tazhong, and Southwest areas. Kekeya, Lunnan, Sangtamu, Jiefangqudong, Donghetang, and Tazhong 4 oil fields have been put into production. Output of crude oil was 2.6 million t (metric tons) (52,000 BOPD) in 1995. The production will increase to 5 million t (100,000 BOPD) in 1997. Giant oil and gas traps probably will be discovered in the Tarim basin. The prospect is promising.

Tarim Basin in western China is home to the world’s second-largest mobile dune desert, Taklimakan Desert, and it’s one of Asia’s primary sources of sand and dust storm. Observations of windblown dust are insufficient over this hyper-dry inland region. Here we present a comprehensive study based on consecutive in-situ field observations, meteorological records, environmental monitoring data and satellite measurements over the Tarim Basin for a full year in 2015. The results show that during the severe sand and dust storm events, the observed ambient PM10 (particulate matter with an aerodynamic diameter ≤ 10 μm) concentration rises rapidly, with a maximum value exceeding 10,000 µg/m3 per hour, while wind speeds reach 10–30 m/s and visibility is reduced to less than 10 m. Soil particulates can be blown vertically into the atmosphere at a height of 3–12 km. High volumes of dust deposition were measured at environmental monitoring stations, ranging from 1764 to 3800 g/m2 yr. Those significant flux levels of ambient particulate matter (PM) concentrations and dust depositions are strongly associated with frequent dust occurrence in the arid environment of the Tarim Basin. Satellite measurements of aerosol optical depths (AOD) show a broad spatial pattern of dust aerosols distribution over the basin, with dense dust remaining suspended for long periods of time (3–5 months in spring and summer seasons). The wind regimes, basin-like topography, thermodynamic condition, and loose sandy surfaces greatly affect the regional aeolian dust environment in the Tarim Basin, which lead to a significantly high dust emission, ambient PM concentration and dust deposition.

The study of ancient crop farming in the arid lands of central Asia (Tuva Depression, Ubsunur Hollow, and Central Mongolia) revealed unique characteristics of the paleogeography of the studied regions, i.e., the prior occurrence of forest-steppe vegetation on currently desert landscapes. In the opinion of the authors, the main reason for the environmental change is anthropogenic, specifically, the destruction of the forest cover, which causes a decrease in groundwater levels and subsequent desertification. From the perspective of the results obtained for the Tarim Basin landscapes, the research presumes that the anthropogenic factor was determinant in the desertification of its area. The natural features of the basin and its surroundings (high-elevation mountainous terrain, glaciers as a water source, active volcanoes, fertile foothill plains, mineral resources, and climate) and the economic advantages of geographic location at a trade crossroads predetermined the emergence of large focal point for the formation of Asian ethnoses in this area; this led to a major anthropogenic impact on the basin ecosystems, which ultimately resulted in landscape degradation and the emergence of deserts (Taklamakan Desert). The desertification processes were augmented by specific relief features, i.e., the rather significant differences in elevation between the basin margins and floor, its endorheic nature, natural disasters associated with volcanic eruptions and melting of glaciers, and the insignificant amount of precipitation. Russian researchers believe that, in the distant past, there was an occasional eruption of people relocating from large focal points of the development of early civilizations to other territories due to the large population size, human energy, and social problems (Gumbatov, 2018). The “exodus” of the tribes from a scanty hollow of the Tarim Basin towards the Mongol Steppe could have been one of the manifestations of those “eruptions.” This can be further supported by the origin of a sacral image of Odugen in the area of the modern-day volcanism in the Eastern Sayan and Khangai Mountains, which appears to have been preserved since the distant past and to be related to the deification of the active volcanoes in the Kunlun Range skirting the Tarim Basin. Another wave of migration from the desertified Tarim Basin was apparently directed toward the Indus Valley, where, in symbiosis with the indigenous population, it gave rise to the Vedic Period. The severe anthropogenic impact on the environment in the Indus Valley and adjoining areas played a part in the formation of new desert landscapes (Thar Desert). The proposed material can be, to some extent, considered a working hypothesis.