干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

We summarize in this overview achievements in current research frontiers in Asian sand dust with emphasis on the method for sand dust research, the sources of sand dust aerosols, emission of sand dust, mechanism of sand dust weather, chemical transformation during transport, and influences on climatic environment and oceans. Our main results show that most of Asian sand dust comes from Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, arid and semiarid desert areas in northwest China, which is divided into initial sources and enhanced sources. Half of the global production of dust originates from Asian dust source regions. Asian dust weather is so immense that it can cover a 5-7-day journey from the sources to the Korean Peninsula, Japan Islands, and the Pacific Ocean to even impact North America. Asian dust weather plays an active role in the biogeochemical cycles of trace elements in the mid-latitude Northern Hemisphere. (C) 2010 Chinese Society of Particuology and Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.