The Correlation Between Aerosol Index (Dust Emission) And Climatic Indices

Heavy dust storms interrupt human activities, and it has become obvious that the long-range transport of dust relates the biogeochemical cycles of land, atmosphere and ocean over the past few decades (Martin and Gordon, 1988; Bergametti, 1998), probably influencing the global carbon cycle (Ridgwell, 2002), and having a significant effects on regional radiative balances (Kinne and Pueschel, 2001; Sokolik and Toon, 1996; Sokolik et al., 2001). Aerosol Index(AI) observed from Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) and Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) from 1979 to 2006 enables us to analyze the possible correlation between Asian dust aerosol and natural oscillations. The purpose of this study is to find relationships of climate indices such as ENSO-MEI, PDO, and AO with the inter-annual variability of Asian dust aerosol. In order to analyze the correlation between Asian dust aerosol and climatic indices, we concentrate on the dust source regions and divide into 5 regions over the major sources of Asian dust (R1: deserts and sands in Kazakhstan, R2: Mongolia, R3: Taklimakan desert, R4: The desert in Tsaidam and the Kumutage Desert, R5: Onqin Daga sandy land and Horqin sandy land). The variations of Asian dust aerosol show weakly, negative correlation with the ENSO-MEI and PDO, whereas show weakly positive correlation with AO. Especially, there are comparatively distinct trend in the region of Southern Tibetan source (R2). This indicates a diminished frequency of Asian dust emission in El Niño years (positive ENSO-MEI).