Abstract
Mineral dust particles play a vital role in climate and the Earth's energy budget and can have impact on weather systems. It has both direct (dust-radiation effect) and indirect (dust-microphysical effect) impacts on the energy budget effect. The most important sources of dust aerosols are located in the Northern Hemisphere, primarily over the Sahara in North Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia respectively and Central Asia is under the influence of mineral dust. The objective of this study to carry out intensity and frequency analysis of sand and dust storm in Central Asia for the period 2003-2017 and compare the results with global values as well as the values of the Middle East region. The AOD and AE parameters can be used to differentiate between coarse and fine particles of aerosols. To investigate average annual and monthly AOD (aerosol optical depth) and AE (angstrom exponent) for the period 2003-2017, AOD and AE data of MODIS Aqua is obtained from Giovanni website. In summary, for the last years (2013-2017), annual mean AOD is comparably lower than the other periods while the values are the highest between 2008 and 2012 for both Central Asia and Middle East. The results point out that there is no increasing trend in AOD values for the recent years and annual Central Asia AOD values show a similar trend with the Middle East AOD values.
Highlights
Mineral dust aerosols, the tiny soil particles suspended in the atmosphere, have a key role in the atmospheric radiation budget and hydrological cycle through their radiative and cloud condensation nucleus effects
Mineral dust aerosols are blown into the atmosphere mainly from arid and semi-arid regions where annual rainfall is extremely low and substantial amounts of alluvial sediment have been accumulated over long periods
They are subject to long-range transport of an intercontinental scale, including North African dust plumes over the Atlantic Ocean, summer dust plumes from the Arabian Peninsula over the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean and spring dust plumes from East Asia over the Pacific Ocean
Summary
The tiny soil particles suspended in the atmosphere, have a key role in the atmospheric radiation budget and hydrological cycle through their radiative and cloud condensation nucleus effects. Mineral dust aerosols are blown into the atmosphere mainly from arid and semi-arid regions where annual rainfall is extremely low and substantial amounts of alluvial sediment have been accumulated over long periods. They are subject to long-range transport of an intercontinental scale, including North African dust plumes over the Atlantic Ocean, summer dust plumes from the Arabian Peninsula over the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean and spring dust plumes from East Asia over the Pacific Ocean. The most important sources of dust aerosols are located in the Northern Hemisphere, primarily over the Sahara and Sahel in North Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia respectively [1]. The annual amount of dust released from the Sahara into the atmosphere is about the half of dust released from all sources on Earth, while the dust released from the Sahara
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