Climate controls on dust storm occurrence in Maowusu Desert, Inner Mongolia, North China

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Huang, Fu-xiang | Gao, Qiong

Affiliations: Laboratory of Quantitative Vegetation Ecology, Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100093, China. E-mail:huangfx@sohu.com

Abstract: Dust storms occurring in arid and semi-arid regions play a main role in the evolution of landscapes. Climate is generally regarded to be important factors influencing the occurrence of dust storm, however, the way of climate controlling dust storms had been poorly understood. In this paper, we present the E&b.omega; Index model to describe the relationship between climate variables and dust storm frequency using the available meteorological data from three meteorological stations in Maowusu Desert. This index model explains 96.8%, 69.8% and 65.3% of the variance of dust storm frequency in three regions from the north to the south, respectively and this difference is probably caused by the difference of the human disturbance. The E&b.omega; Index model is an effective predictor of dust storm frequency and provides us a quite good understanding on the occurrence of dust storms in Maowusu Desert.

Keywords: dust storm, wind erosion, P-E Thornthwaite Index, Maowusu Desert

Journal: Journal of Environmental Sciences, vol. 13, no. 1, pp. 14-21, 2001