The relationship between anthropogenic dust and population over global semi-arid regions

Abstract

Abstract. Although anthropogenic dust has received more attention from the climate research community, its dominant role in the production process is still not identified. In this study, we analysed the relationship between anthropogenic dust and population density/change over global semi-arid regions and found that semi-arid regions are major source regions in producing anthropogenic dust. The results showed that the relationship between anthropogenic dust and population is more obvious in cropland than in other land cover types (crop mosaics, grassland, and urbanized regions) and that the production of anthropogenic dust increases as the population density grows to more than 90 persons km −2 . Four selected semi-arid regions, namely East China, India, North America, and North Africa, were used to explore the relationship between anthropogenic dust production and regional population. The most significant relationship between anthropogenic dust and population occurred in an Indian semi-arid region that had a greater portion of cropland, and the high peak of anthropogenic dust probability appeared with 220 persons km −2 of population density and 60 persons km −2 of population change. These results suggest that the influence of population on production of anthropogenic dust in semi-arid regions is obvious in cropland regions. However, the impact does not always have a positive contribution to the production of anthropogenic dust, and overly excessive population will suppress the increase of anthropogenic dust. Moreover, radiative and climate effects of increasing anthropogenic dust need more investigation.

Insight into global trends in aerosol composition from 2005 to 2015 inferred from the OMI Ultraviolet Aerosol Index

“…These positive signals are driven by the absorption by mineral dust (Herman et al, 1997;Torres et al, 1998;Buchard et al, 2015). The simulation underestimates some of the smaller dust features captured by OMI, such as over western North America, South America, Australia, and parts of Asia, perhaps reflecting an underesti- mation in the simulated mineral dust lifetime (Ridley et al, 2012) and missing dust sources (Ginoux et al, 2012;Guan et al, 2016;Huang et al, 2015;Philip et al, 2017). The seasonal variation in the observed and simulated UVAI is similar albeit with larger simulated values in spring (MAM) over North Africa.…”

Variations in airborne bacterial communities at high altitudes over the Noto Peninsula (Japan) in response to Asian dust events

“…However, the family Micrococcaceae in Actinobacteria was primarily detected from anthropogenic particles collected in Beijing, China (Cao et al, 2014). Over anthropogenic source regions for Asian continents, anthropogenic particles occupy more than 90 % of dust particles and originate from soils disturbed by human activities in cropland, pastureland, and urbanized regions (Huang et al, 2015a;Guan et al, 2016). Air masses transported from the continental coasts are expected to include a relatively high abundance of Actinobacteria members associated with anthropogenic particles.…”

Contributions of radiative factors to enhanced dryland warming over East Asia

“…Compared with the results presented in Figure , the trend in Figure suggests that radiative factors have a dominant role in the enhanced warming observed over the drylands. Variability in RFT is usually closely associated with GHGs, aerosols [ Huang et al , ; Li et al , ; Guan et al , ], land use cover changes, decreased albedo, clouds [ Huang et al , , ], and regional human activity. With the rapid economic development and industrialization of East Asia, a large number of anthropogenic GHGs, especially CO 2 and aerosols, are being produced and released into the atmosphere, and eventually impact local climate [ Qian et al , , ].…”

“…Generally, the aerosols in drylands are divided into two categories: natural and anthropogenic aerosols. Asia is a heavy aerosol‐laden region with increasing trends of both desert dust and anthropogenic emission [ Hsu et al , ], and anthropogenic aerosols may play a major role according to Guan et al []. With intense human activity and rapid economic development, anthropogenic aerosol emissions have likely increased over different regions [ Mahowald and Luo , ], and such increases can promote aerosol loading and affect radiative forcing [ Huang et al , ].…”