Estimates of atmospheric dust deposition to five Asian/Pacific regions indicate that 800 Tg of Chinese desert dust is injected into the atmosphere annually; about 30of this is re-deposited onto the deserts, 20regional-scales, primarily within continental China. The remaining 50of the dust is subject to long-range transport to the Pacific Ocean and beyond. Elemental tracers based on several dust-derived elements (Al, Fe, Mg and Sc) reveal high-frequency variability in the contributions of the western desert sources vs. northern high-dust and low-dust desert sources to eolian deposits from the center of the Loess Plateau. Comparisons of the patterns uncovered with climate signals from the remote North Atlantic region for the last glaciation show that shifts in source areas of Asian dust were synchronous with large-scale variations in atmospheric circulation.
AGU Index Terms: 1610 Atmosphere; 0305 Aerosols and particles ,; 1065 Trace elements; 1620 Climate dynamics
Keywords/Free Terms: Dust emission, elemental tracer, Chinese deserts, source-shifts of Asian dust
JGR-Atmospheres 97JD02300
Vol. 102
, No. D23
, p. 28,401