Seasonal and Yearly Variations of Dust Deposition in Tsukuba: Possible Linkage with Variations of Dust Emission over the Asian Continent

Abstract

Both wet and dry deposition fluxes of Aeolian dust were analyzed for over one year (from March 2007 to May 2008) including two dust seasons in Tsukuba, Japan. The annual wet and dry deposition fluxes of dust were 5.5 g m-2 and 3.8 g m-2, respectively. The largest wet deposition flux associated with the one heavy Asian dust event was 0.95 g m-2, which accounted for 10% to the annual total deposition. A typical feature of the deposition fluxes marked seasonal variation with higher deposition in spring. Furthermore, the wet deposition fluxes in the spring (March-May) 2007 were larger than those in 2008. The temporal variations of wet depositions were agreed well with the model simulation. Analysis of model simulation showed that the seasonal and year to year variations of the wet deposition fluxes in Tsukuba could be closely connected with the variation of dust emission over the Asian continent associated with stronger wind. For dry deposition fluxes of dust, local dust near the observation region also contributed to the deposition fluxes in addition to the Asian dust.