Characterisation of the major dust storm that traversed over eastern Australia in September 2009; a multidisciplinary approach

Munday, Chris I; Brocks, Jochen J.; O'Loingsigh, Tadhg; Allison, Gwen E.; Hope, Joseph; Norman, Marc D.; Stuut, Jan‐Berend; Tapper, Nigel; Kaars, Sander van der

doi:10.1016/j.aeolia.2014.07.003

Cited by 39 publications

(25 citation statements)

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“…The majority of dust storms reaching the east coast from 2000 to 2009 occurred during the austral spring months of September, October, and November (Figure ), especially from October 2002 and September 2009 when large dust storms occurred [ McTainsh et al ., ; De Deckker et al ., , ]. Dust storms in Australia are most common in spring and summer months [ McTainsh and Leys , ; McTainsh et al ., ], but this is characteristic of central Australia where total dust storm frequency is highest.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this study, we restricted the number of observations analyzed to those characterized as dust “storms” by the observers, with visibility values less than 5 km. We found that these dates corresponded well to published LEB dust storm dates in the literature [e.g., Bullard et al ., ; O'Loingsigh , ; De Deckker et al ., , ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The Millennium Drought was experienced across all of eastern Australia and not just within the LEB or its neighboring source regions as defined in this study. As such, many of the agricultural or pastoral regions lying between the LEB and the eastern coast of Australia also had the potential to contribute additional suspended soil to dust events that originated in the LEB [see, for example, De Deckker et al ., ]. However the potential of any contribution to LEB‐sourced dust events from eroding surfaces upwind and downwind of the designated source sectors is not considered in this study.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…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].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2017

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From the late 1990s to mid‐2010, Australia was affected by a prolonged period of drought, the “Millennium Drought,” during which numerous severe dust storms crossed the continent. We inspect this period to produce the first continental‐scale climatology of air‐parcel trajectories that is specific to dust and use it to gain new insights into dust transport dynamics over the eastern half of Australia. The analysis is based upon dust arrival times from airport meteorological observations made at nine mostly coastal cities for 2000–2009. The Hybrid Single‐Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory model was used to calculate 1.26 million backward trajectories from receptor cities, with only those trajectories associated with a dust storm observation considered in the analysis of dust transport. To tie dust trajectories from receptors to likely emission sources, trajectories were linked to six known major dust source regions in and around the Lake Eyre Basin. The Lake Eyre North ephemeral lake system, alluvial‐dominated Channel Country, and agricultural Mallee‐Riverina regions emerge as important sources for the period, providing variable contributions to different parts of the seaboard as controlled by different front‐related wind systems. Our study also provides new detail regarding dust pathways from continental Australia. For the Millennium Drought we identify that the broadly established Southeast Dust Path may be more accurately subdivided into three active pathways, driven by prefrontal northerly winds and a variation in the influence of frontal westerlies. The detail of these pathways has implications for dust delivery from specific Australian sources to different marine environments.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

et al. 2017

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“…Bacterial assessments of desert dust have been performed in a range of locations from the Caribbean (Griffin et al 2001) to Korea (Hua et al 2007) and Australia (De Deckker et al 2008;Lim et al 2011;De Deckker et al 2014). Several studies based on culture-dependent methods have found that there are strong links between dust sources in the Sahara and sinks in the Caribbean and Mediterranean (Griffin et al 2003;Kellogg et al 2004;Griffin et al 2007).…”

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confidence: 98%

Characterizing bacterial assemblages in sediments and aerosols at a dry lake bed in Australia using high-throughput sequencing

et al. 2015

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Dust storms are responsible for the transport of a large quantity of bacteria from arid regions. A severe drought in the first decade of the new millennium in Australia increased the incidence of dust transport further. The major aims of this study were to characterize the bacterial communities in aerosols and their associated source sediments using high-throughput sequencing (HTS) and to investigate the possibility of using HTS to link dust to its source, which has not been previously performed in this way. Four field campaigns were conducted at the recently evaporated saline playa Lake Gnarpurt in the Australian state of Victoria between 2008 and 2010 (3 in the austral summer, 1 in winter) to collect aerosol and sediment samples. Aerosol samples were collected on filters up to 150 m above the lake bed using a tethered heliumfilled balloon. DNA was extracted from all samples using commercial kits, and the bacterial communities were examined using 454 HTS on the 16S rRNA gene. Over 200,000 sequences from 29 samples were analysed. In both sediment and aerosol samples, Salinimicrobium was the most abundant taxon; however, there was great variation and diversity across all samples. Analysis of similarities of the bacterial communities indicated that there was a significant overlap between the sediment samples and the aerosols collected above that location, showing that the bacteria in the air was derived from a subset of dust from a nearby source. The challenge remains to use bacterial profiling to link an aerosol sample to a distant source.

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Provenance of dust to Antarctica: A lead isotopic perspective

Gili

Gaiero

Goldstein

et al. 2016

Geophysical Research Letters

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Antarctic ice preserves an ~800 kyr record of dust activity in the Southern Hemisphere. Major efforts have been dedicated to elucidate the origin of this material in order to gain greater insight into the atmospheric dust cycle. On the basis of Pb isotopes in Antarctic dust samples and potential sources, this contribution demonstrates for the first time that Patagonia is the main contributor of dust to Antarctica during interglacial periods as well as glacials, although the potential importance of Tierra del Fuego remains unclear because of its geochemical similarities to Patagonia. An important new finding is that the Puna‐Altiplano sector of the continent is a second important dust source to eastern Antarctica during both glacials and interglacials, being more prominent during interglacials. The data indicate South America is the primary dust source to Antarctica during both glacials and interglacials.

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Characterisation of the major dust storm that traversed over eastern Australia in September 2009; a multidisciplinary approach

Cited by 39 publications

References 68 publications

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

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

Characterizing bacterial assemblages in sediments and aerosols at a dry lake bed in Australia using high-throughput sequencing

Provenance of dust to Antarctica: A lead isotopic perspective

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