Observation on soil water content and wind speed in Erlianhot, a dust-source area in northern China

Abstract

In this manuscript, the authors investigated the spring dust storm event in northern Inner Mongolia of China and the relationship between wind speed and soil water content in dust storm events and non-dust storm events, as well as the impact of the precipitation on the soil water content variations. The seasonal variations of precipitation are remarkable, the spring precipitations account only for 15% of the total amount in the whole year. The soil water content is fairly well consistent with precipitation amount. In addition, the soil water contents show a good relationship with wind speeds, which is supported by the significantly negative correlations. But, the non-dust storm events shows no the evident relationship. It implies that soil water content can modulate dust storm activity through influencing the wetness of land surface under the same cold highs. The obvious variation in non-dust storms was the greater increase of soil water content rather than the decrease of wind speed. Both of them had variation with a weaker swing. However, for the status of dust storm, wind speeds had larger wave and soil water content shows stability and lower value. The wetness change on land surface, at least partly, is responsible for the secular reducing dust storm events in the study area.