Arid Zone Research ›› 2024, Vol. 41 ›› Issue (7): 1112-1119.doi: 10.13866/j.azr.2024.07.03

• Weather and Climate • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Dust weather changes in Northwest Chinese Cities: Lanzhou as a case study

LYU Yanxun(), ZHAO Hongmin(), WANG Xiaojun, WANG Bin, MA Zhongwu, LIU Minlan, ZHANG Linghui   

  1. Gansu Ecological Resources Monitoring Centre (Gansu Forestry Survey and Planning Institute), Lanzhou 730030, Gansu, China
  • Received:2024-02-28 Revised:2024-05-06 Online:2024-07-15 Published:2024-08-01

Abstract:

In recent years, many studies on sand and dust storms in Northwest China have mainly focused on large and regional scales, with less research on urban sand and dust storms. This paper studies the changing characteristics of urban sand and dust weather in Lanzhou City to understand the alteration characteristics of urban sand and dust storms. The results showed that (1) The number of days of floating dust, sand lifting, and dust storms in Lanzhou City from 2009 to 2023 showed multisegment fluctuation; the change at the time series level as a whole and the total number of days of sand and dust weather showed a marginal decrease of 0.66 d·a-1. (2) The sand and dust weather in Lanzhou City was concentrated in the spring, declining monthly after the cliff rises in March, mainly dominated by floating dust, followed by sand and dust storms. (3) The annual average frequency of dusty weather in Lanzhou City from 2009 to 2023 correlated positively with wind speed, which is the main meteorological factor affecting dusty weather, weakly negatively correlated with relative humidity, and no obvious correlation with the rest of the meteorological factors. (4) The number of dusty days occurred in 3-time cycle scales of 2~3 a, 4~7 a, and 8~23 a, revealing a multisegmented nonsignificant fluctuation, of which 8~23 a corresponded to two peaks with the most substantial amplitude, which is the primary cycle of dusty fluctuation.

Key words: dusty weather, floating dust, blowing sand, sandstorm, characteristics of change, Lanzhou