Although continental-scale plumes of Asian dust and pollution reduce the amount of solar radiation reaching the earth's surface and perturb the chemistry of the atmosphere, our ability to quantify these effects has been limited by a lack of critical observations, particularly of layers above the surface. Comprehensive surface, airborne, shipboard, and satellite measurements of Asian aerosol chemical composition, size, optical properties, and radiative impacts were performed during the Asian Pacific Regional Aerosol Characterization Experiment (ACE-Asia) study. Measurements within a massive Chinese dust storm at numerous widely spaced sampling locations revealed the highly complex structure of the atmosphere, in which layers of dust, urban pollution, and biomass- burning smoke may be transported long distances as distinct entities or mixed together. The data allow a first-time assessment of the regional climatic and atmospheric chemical effects of a continental-scale mixture of dust and pollution. Our results show that radiative flux reductions during such episodes are sufficient to cause regional climate change.
Departments of Chemical Engineering and Environmental Science and Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California
College of Engineering, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa
CEMRC, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, New Mexico
Brechtel Manufacturing, Inc., Hayward, California
NOAA Pacific Marine and Environmental Laboratory, Seattle, Washington
Department of Chemical Engineering, University of California, Davis, Davis, California
Department of Oceanography, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii
Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Oceans, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington
Naval Research Laboratory, Monterey, California
Meteorology Research Institute/KMA, Seoul, Korea
Institute of Geophysics, Warsaw University, Warsaw, Poland
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California
NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California
National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Japan
Research Institute for Applied Mechanics, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan
School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia
Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing, China
