Abstract
Because of the unique geographical location of the Tibetan Plateau and its important role in global climate change, aerosol variability over the plateau has been of wide interest to the academic community. Most studies have focused on the influence of external aerosols; however, a few studies have been conducted on dust aerosols within the plateau. In this study, the plateau was divided into three regions, west, south, and north based on surface vegetation and climatic characteristics, and the Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry was used to simulate the Tibetan Plateau from 2004 to 2006 to quantify the spatial and temporal variability of dust within the plateau with high resolution. The dust sources of the plateau are located in the northern part of the Qiangtang Plateau, the Yarlung Tsangpo River basin, the Namucuo and Lhasa regions, the Qaidam Basin, the source areas of the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers, and the Qinghai Lake and its surrounding areas. Owing to windy weather and arid soil conditions, the dust emissions of the three regions reached 11.00 × 107 (west), 3.30 × 107 (south) and 4.50 × 107 (north) μg·m-2, during winter, and remained at a low level from May to October. Although the annual variation in dust emissions was relatively consistent across the three regions, there were substantial differences in dust loading, with almost no dust present in the atmosphere in the south, a peak dust loading of 94.00 × 105 μg·m-2 in January in the west, and a bimodal structure in the north with peaks in April and October and a maximum value of 13.00 × 1010 μg·m-2, which was primarily influenced by the temperature 2 m above the ground. In summer 10 % of the dust that starts in the interior of the plateau can be transported to the upper troposphere (above 8 km).
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