Characterisation of atmospheric deposited particles during a dust storm in urban areas of Eastern Australia

Abstract

The characteristics of dust particles deposited during the 2009 dust storm in the Gold Coast and Brisbane regions of Australia are discussed in this paper. The study outcomes provide important knowledge in relation to the potential impacts of dust storm related pollution on ecosystem health in the context that the frequency of dust storms is predicted to increase due to anthropogenic desert surface modifications and climate change impacts. The investigated dust storm contributed a large fraction of fine particles to the environment with an increased amount of total suspended solids, compared to dry deposition under ambient conditions. Although the dust storm passed over forested areas, the organic carbon content in the dust was relatively low. The primary metals present in the dust storm deposition were aluminium, iron and manganese, which are common soil minerals in Australia. The dust storm deposition did not contain significant loads of nickel, cadmium, copper and lead, which are commonly present in the urban environment. Furthermore, the comparison between the ambient and dust storm chromium and zinc loads suggested that these metals were contributed to the dust storm by local anthropogenic sources. The potential ecosystem health impacts of the 2009 dust storm include, increased fine solids deposition on ground surfaces resulting in an enhanced capacity to adsorb toxic pollutants as well as increased aluminium, iron and manganese loads. In contrast, the ecosystem health impacts related to organic carbon and other metals from dust storm atmospheric deposition are not considered to be significant.

Sources and pathways of dust during the Australian “Millennium Drought” decade

“…Few studies have linked precise arrival times of dust during the Millennium Drought to sources using air‐parcel modeling, in the way, for instance, Gunawardena et al . [] linked dust detected in southern Queensland to a southern LEB source region in September 2009.…”

“…Air‐parcel trajectory modeling is a well‐developed technique to link dust arriving at receptor sites to its upwind source or sources, where most studies analyzing trajectories generally focus on single or relatively few dust events [e.g., Radhi et al ., ; Gunawardena et al ., ]. Studies using air‐parcel trajectory modeling have offered considerable insights into facets of Australian dust transport [ McGowan et al ., ; Bui et al ., ].…”

“…To date, approximately 20 studies have been published on this particular event and a series of smaller dust storms that occurred throughout the month of September 2009. These papers have explored a range of dust-related research areas such as respiratory health and air quality [Holyoak et al, 2011;Jayaratne et al, 2011;Barnett et al, 2012;Merrifield et al, 2013;Aryal et al, 2015], economic and aviation disruption [Tozer, 2012;Baddock et al, 2013;Tozer and Leys, 2013], aerosol remote sensing [Li et al, 2010;Tramutoli et al, 2010;Jones and Christopher, 2011;De Deckker et al, 2014], airflow modeling [Gunawardena et al, 2013], receptor site sampling and meteorology [Leys et al, 2011;McGowan and Soderholm, 2012], marine biology [Hallegraeff et al, 2014;Gabric et al, 2015], and geochemistry Radhi et al, 2010;Aryal et al, 2012;Gunawardena et al, 2013;De Deckker et al, 2014;Reynolds et al, 2014]. In contributing across a suite of geoscientific and environmental topics, these studies demonstrate the wide areas in which mineral dust has emerged as an important study area in Earth system science [Shao et al, 2011;Bryant, 2013].…”

“…The most prominent drawback of these works is the absence of a clear methodology to determine where the detected dust came from. Few studies have linked precise arrival times of dust during the Millennium Drought to sources using air-parcel modeling, in the way, for instance, Gunawardena et al [2013] linked dust detected in southern Queensland to a southern LEB source region in September 2009. Air-parcel trajectory modeling is a well-developed technique to link dust arriving at receptor sites to its upwind source or sources, where most studies analyzing trajectories generally focus on single or relatively few dust events [e.g., Radhi et al, 2010;Gunawardena et al, 2013].…”

“…Few studies have linked precise arrival times of dust during the Millennium Drought to sources using air-parcel modeling, in the way, for instance, Gunawardena et al [2013] linked dust detected in southern Queensland to a southern LEB source region in September 2009. Air-parcel trajectory modeling is a well-developed technique to link dust arriving at receptor sites to its upwind source or sources, where most studies analyzing trajectories generally focus on single or relatively few dust events [e.g., Radhi et al, 2010;Gunawardena et al, 2013]. Studies using air-parcel trajectory modeling have offered considerable insights into facets of Australian dust transport [McGowan et al, 2000;Bui et al, 2015].…”