Modeling study of long-range transport of Asian dust and anthropogenic aerosols from East Asia

A three-dimensional aerosol transport-radiation model, SPRINTARS, successfully simulates the long-range transport of the large-scale Asian dust storms from East Asia to North America which crossed the North Pacific Ocean during the springtime of 2001 and 2002. It is found from the calculated dust optical thickness that 10 to 20% of the Asian dust around Japan reached North America. The simulation also reveals the importance of the contribution of anthropogenic aerosols, which are carbonaceous and sulfate aerosols emitted from the industrialized areas in East Asia, to air turbidity during the dust storms. The contribution of the anthropogenic aerosol to the total optical thickness is simulated to be of a comparable order to that of the Asian dust, which is consistent with the observed values of the particle size index from the satellite and ground-based sun/sky photometry.