Characteristics of Recent Occurrence Frequency of Asian dust over the Source Regions - Analysis of the dust Occurrences since 2002

최근의 황사 발원지에서의 먼지 발생 특성-2002년 이후 먼지발생 경향 분석

In order to examine the variational features of Asian dust outbreak in recent years, observed WMO synop data were employed for the period from 1996 to 2007. We first divided Asian dust source regions into four subregions; 1) Taklamakan, 2) Gobi, 3) Inner Mongolia-Manchuria and 4) Loess, and the meteorogical variables such as wind speed, precipitation and threshold wind speed observed during the Asian dust outbreak period were compared with those during non-Asian dust period. The results showed that temporal variation of occurrence frequency of dust outbreak had a strong positive correlation with the frequency of strong wind speed and low precipitation in each of the 4 source regions. Spatial distributions of frequency of dust occurrence after 2002 showed increasing trend in Gobi and Inner Mongolia-Manchuria but decreasing trend in Loess region. This is showing a shift in main source region toward Northwest, especially since 2003.