Dustfall Associated with Dust Storms in the Al-Ahsa Oasis of Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Dustfall is a major threat to agricultural and industrial infrastructures, as well as to other aspects of livelihood. Dustfall associated to a severe dust storm that hit the Al-Ahsa Oasis of Saudi Arabia during 12-13 March 2014 is discussed in this paper. The storm caused widespread and heavy dust deposition. A dramatic decrease in the visibility coincided with the storm, and the average dust concentrations recorded during a peak 10-hour period were 6772, 5862.4 and 451.1 µg/m 3 for total suspended particles (TSP), particulate matter smaller than or equal to 10 µm (PM10) and those smaller than or equal to 2.5 µm (PM2.5), respectively. The lowest visibility was 200 m, and the wind speed increased to 17.5 m/s from the north. The average daily dust deposited in the study area during the event was 12.84 (SD = 1.2) g/(m 2 •d). The dust samples comprised insoluble dust (48.5%) and soluble dust (51.5%). Based on the Munsell color system, the final color description of the falling dust was 10 YR/6/3. A microphotograph of the dustfall (settleable particulate matter) captured by a stereo dissection microscope shows that the dust particles had various colors and sizes, and they contained fibers and vegetative debris).

Visibility Parameter in Sand/Dust Storms’ Radio Wave Attenuation Equations: An Approach for Reliable Visibility Estimation Based on Existing Empirical Equations to Minimize Potential Biases in Calculations

“…The concisely listed variations in Table 2 confirm the notion of difficulty in producing a general empirical relationship. This is observed in Figure 1, which is a visualization of quantities in Table 2, where, for example, Chung et al's [20] and Almuhanna's [17,18] rather similar visibilities correspond to two different TSP concentrations in the air. However, despite the noted variations, the data plotted in Figure 1 confirms an inversely-proportional relationship between the visibilities and TSP concentrations, which generally agrees with the relationship of visibility (V) and TSP concentration (M) parameters in the equations listed in Table 1.…”

“…where F is the frequency in GHz in (12), ( 15), (16), and (17), V is the visibility in km in (12) to (17), r e is the effective particle radius in µm in ( 14) and ( 15), r is the particle radius in µm in (16), and λ is the wavelength in meters in (13) and (14).…”

“…The data points between the extrema are generally known to obey the form of a power function [16]. a data point measurements were extracted from images using the digitization [21] method (TSP: Figure 7 in [17]/Figure 9 in [18] and visibility: Figure 8 in [18]; Figure 2 in [14]; Figure 5 in [15]). b minimum (R 2 = 0.7321) and maximum (R 2 = 0.7634) errors are fitted with a trendline for conciseness.…”

Using a pedotransfer (PTF) model to establish GIS-based maps for the main physical and hydraulic soil properties in the eastern region of the Al-Ahsa Oasis, Saudi Arabia

“…In the northeast corner of the study area, near Al-Omran city, toward Hufof, the highest concentration of sand particles exists. This may refer to the deposition of drifting sand and dune movement, horizontally creeping 10 to 15 m annually [ 46 – 48 ].…”

Northeastern California plateaus bioregion science synthesis

“…BSC organisms can achieve airborne status when strong non-convective horizontal winds blowing over unconsolidated soil surfaces pick up large quantities of soil and the associated organisms. Strong dust storms occur in North America (McLeman et al 2014), Alaska (Nickling 1978), China (Wang et al 2004), Australia (Ekström et al 2004), Africa (Prospero and Mayor-Bacero 2013), and the Middle East (Almuhanna 2015). On a smaller, but more common scale, dust may be lifted into the atmosphere by strong vertical vortices or "dust devils" (Horton et al 2016;Metzger et al 2011).…”