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Sand and dust storms (SDSs) are natural disasters that frequently occur during spring in arid and semi-arid areas., causing serious impacts on human health, air quality, transportation, and agricultural production. Accurately simulating the occurrence and evolution of SDSs is of great significance for identifying dust sources and formulating effective disaster prevention measures. In this study, numerical simulations were conducted to reveal the dynamic spatiotemporal evolution and transport of dust load across East Asia. Using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) and European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts Reanalysis v5 (ERA5) data, the most severe SDS events in the spring of 2023 in East Asia were numerically simulated. The simulated results were compared and validated using meteorological observations and multisource remote sensing data. The results showed that the simulated dust load in the peak regions showed close agreement with ground-based observations during the events. The primary dust sources in spring 2023 were identified as the western desert of Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, and the Taklimakan Desert in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China. Peak dust load and maximum wind speed occurred almost simultaneously, indicating that high wind speed was the primary driver of sand and dust mobilization during individual SDS events. Increased surface vegetation covers partially mitigated wind-driven dust emissions. In April, strong winds over the Gobi Desert on the Mongolian Plateau predominantly drove cross-border SDSs along northwestern and northward transport pathways. Dust originating from Mongolia exerts a substantial influence on particulate dust load in the central and eastern parts of Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region of China. In contrast, their impact on the northwestern regions of China remains relatively limited. These findings contribute to understanding the source areas of SDS events in East Asia by simulating the dynamic evolution of SDSs and elucidating the relationships between SDS events and local geographical and environmental factors.
Shaopu et al. (Sun,) studied this question.