TY - JOUR
T1 - A Quantitative Model-Based Assessment of Stony Desert Landscape Evolution in the Hami Basin, China
T2 - Implications for Plio-Pleistocene Dust Production in Eastern Asia
AU - Abell, Jordan T.
AU - Rahimi, Stefan R.
AU - Pullen, Alex
AU - Lebo, Zachary J.
AU - Zhang, Dehai
AU - Kapp, Paul
AU - Gloege, Lucas
AU - Ridge, Sean
AU - Nie, Junsheng
AU - Winckler, Gisela
N1 - Funding Information:
We would like to thank Mingfang Ting for fruitful discussions that improved the project. We would also like to thanks the two anonymous reviewers for comments that greatly improved the manuscript. This research was funded in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation PIRE award #1545859 (Gisela Winckler and Alex Pullen), Lamont‐Doherty Earth Observatory, and Clemson University.
Publisher Copyright:
©2020. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved.
PY - 2020/10/28
Y1 - 2020/10/28
N2 - Dust plays an important role in climate, and while our current representation of dust production includes shifts in vegetation, soil moisture, and ice cover, it does not account for the role of landscape evolution. Here, we use the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled to an aerosol chemistry model to quantify the effects of arid landscape evolution on boundary layer conditions, dust production, and radiative properties in the Hami Basin, China, a dynamic stony desert in eastern Asia. Relative to today, altered surface roughness, sediment erodibility, and albedo combine to produce up to a ~44% increase in wind speeds (mean ≈ 15%), up to a ~59% increase in dust loading (mean ≈ 30%), and up to a ~4.4 W m−2 increase in downwelling radiation (mean ≈ 2.4 W m−2) over the Hami Basin. Our modeling results, along with geomorphological data for the western Gobi Desert, provide evidence that stony deserts acted as important Plio-Pleistocene dust sources.
AB - Dust plays an important role in climate, and while our current representation of dust production includes shifts in vegetation, soil moisture, and ice cover, it does not account for the role of landscape evolution. Here, we use the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled to an aerosol chemistry model to quantify the effects of arid landscape evolution on boundary layer conditions, dust production, and radiative properties in the Hami Basin, China, a dynamic stony desert in eastern Asia. Relative to today, altered surface roughness, sediment erodibility, and albedo combine to produce up to a ~44% increase in wind speeds (mean ≈ 15%), up to a ~59% increase in dust loading (mean ≈ 30%), and up to a ~4.4 W m−2 increase in downwelling radiation (mean ≈ 2.4 W m−2) over the Hami Basin. Our modeling results, along with geomorphological data for the western Gobi Desert, provide evidence that stony deserts acted as important Plio-Pleistocene dust sources.
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U2 - 10.1029/2020GL090064
DO - 10.1029/2020GL090064
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85094677939
VL - 47
JO - Geophysical Research Letters
JF - Geophysical Research Letters
SN - 0094-8276
IS - 20
M1 - e2020GL090064
ER -