Thin dust cloud/veil from field/agricultural land. Credit: Александра Замулина

Dust outbreaks sweep through China

18 February 2016 00:00 UTC–19 February 23:30 UTC

Thin dust cloud/veil from field/agricultural land. Credit: Александра Замулина
Thin dust cloud/veil from field/agricultural land. Credit: Александра Замулина

During 18-19 February 2016 several dust outbreaks occurred over China.

Last Updated

10 October 2022

Published on

17 February 2016

By HansPeter Roesli (Switzerland)

Driven by westerly winds, the dust swept through the country, partially as far as the East China Sea.

 Himawari-8 Dust RGB, 19 Feb 01:00 UTC.
Figure 1: Himawari-8 Dust RGB, 19 February 01:00 UTC.

The conditions over these two days were quite cloudy, so the dust is difficult to identify.

Only the sequence of half-hourly Dust RGBs in the very fast animation (Figure 2) reveals some of the dust sources and streamers.

Figure 2: Himawari-8 Dust RGB, 18 February 00:00 UTC–19 February 23:30 UTC
 Suomi-NPP, 18 Feb, 06:52 UTC
Figure 3: Suomi-NPP VIIRS Dust RGB, laid over Google Earth, 18 February 06:52 UTC
 Himawari-8, 19 Feb, 14:00 UTC
Figure 4: Himawari-8 AHI Dust RGB, laid over Google Earth, 19 February, 14:00 UTC

Two Dust RGB images offer the opportunity to pinpoint a couple of the many dust sources.

The VIIRS overflight on 18 February close to 07:00UTC (Figure 3) shows sources labelled A and B on either side of the Qilian mountains.

On the image from Himawari-8 taken 31 hours later (Figure 4) new sources of dust (labelled 1 and 2) appeared further east on either side of the borderline between the provinces of Qinghai and Gansu.

It looks like the dust sources shown in Figure 3 had a relatively short outreach, while those shown in Figure 4 were farther reaching.

 

Additional content

Dust cloud from China expected to reach Taiwan today (Taipei Times)