Abstract
Northern China is the area with the highest incidence of dust storms in the world, which are the main sources of its soil dust emissions. In addition, the region consumes huge amounts of fossil fuels and has serious atmospheric particulate pollution. Existing observation results show that a single dust storm has significant influence on atmospheric particulate pollutant concentrations and precipitation acidity. Proving the influence of dust storms on atmospheric particulate pollution, acid rain, and the acid rain ratio and determining whether there is a causal relationship among them on a longer time scale will help us recognize the impact of dust storms on the atmospheric environment. This paper proves that dust storms are the direct cause of the variations in the number of acid rain days and acid rain ratio, as well as the changes in atmospheric particulate pollution, in spring by using the Granger Causality Test and correlation analysis methods based on 1993 to 2007 data, including the number of days of dust storms, atmospheric particulate pollution, and acid rain. Atmospheric particulate pollution is the direct cause of variations in the number of acid rain days and the acid rain ratio in spring; for the other seasons, additional data combined with atmospheric particulate pollution are needed to explain the causes of the acid rain day and ratio changes.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aryal R, Beecham S, Kamruzzaman M, Conner S, Lee BK (2015) Temporal change of PM10, and its mass fraction during a dust storm in September 2009 in Australia. Air Quality Atmos Health 8(5):483–494
Attanasio A, Pasini A, Triacca U (2012) A contribution to attribution of recent global warming by out-of-sample Granger causality analysis. Atmos Sci Letters 13(1):67–72
Attanasio A, Pasini A, Triacca U (2013) Granger causality analyses for climatic attribution. Atmos Climate Sci 3(4):515–522
Bessagnet B, Menut L, Aymoz G, Chepfer H, Vautard R (2008) Modeling dust emissions and transport within Europe: The Ukraine March 2007 event. J Geophys Res: Atmos 113, doi:10.1029/2007JD009541
Borbély-Kiss I, Kiss AZ, Koltay E, Szabó G, Bozó L (2004) Saharan dust episodes in Hungarian aerosol: elemental signatures and transport trajectories. J Aerosol Sci 35(10):1205–1224
Chang YS, Arndt RL, Carmichael GR (1996) Mineral base-cation deposition in Asia. Atmos Environ 30(13):2417–2427
China Meteorological Administration (2010) Chinese Meteorological Data Sharing Service System. 2010-12-31 Available from: http://cdc.cma.gov.cn/dataSetDetailed.do
China National Environmental Monitoring Centre (2012) The National Urban Air Quality Real-time Publishing Platform. 2012-12-31 Available from: http://113.108.142.147:20035/emcpublish
Granger CWJ (1969) Investigating causal relations by econometric models and cross-spectral methods. Econometrica 37(3):424–438
Granger CWJ (1986) Developments in the study of cointegrated economic variables. Oxford B Econ Stat 48(3):213–228
Gu JX, Du SY, Han DW, Hou LJ, Yi J, Xu J, Liu GH, Han B, Yang GW, Bai ZP (2014) Major chemical compositions, possible sources, and mass closure analysis of PM2.5 in Jinan, China. Air Quality Atmos Health 7(3):251–262
Guo JH, Rahn KA, Zhuang GS (2004) A mechanism for the increase of pollution elements in dust storms in Beijing. Atoms Environ 38(6):855–862
Hagen LJ, Woodruff NP (1973) Air pollution from duststorms in the great plains. Atmos Environ 7(3):323–332
Kim HS, Chung YS, Yoon MB (2015) An analysis on the impact of large-scale transports of dust pollution on air quality in east Asia as observed in central Korea in 2014. Air Quality Atmos Health 9(1):83–93
Larssen T, Carmichael GR (2000) Acid rain and acidification in China: the importance of base cation deposition. Environ Pollut 110(1):89–102
Larssen T, Schnoor JL, Seip HM, Dawei Z (2000) Evaluation of different approaches for modeling effects of acid rain on soils in China. Sci Total Environ 246(2):175–193
Liu JL XUG, Yang J (2013) Extreme temperature events in Chongqing and their relation with the mean temperature and precipitation change based on Granger Causality Test. Chinese Journal of Agrometeorology 34(02):236–242, in Chinese
Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People’s Republic of China (2004) China Environmental Statistical Yearbook 2004. 2005-11-28 Available from: http://zls.mep.gov.cn/hjtj/nb/2004tj
Ministry of Environmental Protection of the People’s Republic of China (2015) China Environmental Status Bulletin. 2015-12-31 Available from: http://www.mep.gov.cn/hjzl/zghjzkgb/lnzghjzkgb
Moulin C, Lambert CE, Dulac F, Dayan U (1997) Control of atmospheric export of dust from North Africa by the North Atlantic Oscillation. Nature 387:691–694
Pasini A, Triacca U, Attanasio A (2012) Evidence of recent causal decoupling between solar radiation and global temperature. Environ Res Letters 7(3):034020
Sha Y, Wang AP, Yang SL, Liu PS (1996) Correlation of acid rain with the distributions of acid and alkaline elements in aerosols. Nucl Instrum Meth B 109(110):551–554
Shen ZX, Cao JJ, Arimoto R, Han ZW, Zhang RJ, Han YM, Liu SX, Okuda T, Nakao S, Tanaka S (2009) Ionic composition of TSP and PM2.5 during dust storms and air pollution episodes at Xi’an, China. Atoms Environ 43(18):2911–2918
Tang AH, Zhuang GS, Wang Y, Yuan H, Sun YL (2005) The chemistry of precipitation and its relation to aerosol in Beijing. Atoms Environ 39(19):3397–3406
Terada H, Ueda H, Wang ZF (2002) Trend of acid rain and neutralization by yellow sand in east Asia—a numerical study. Atoms Environ 36(3):503–509
Triacca U, Attanasio A, Pasini A (2013) Anthropogenic global warming hypothesis: testing its robustness by Granger causality analysis. Environmetrics 24(4):260–268
Wang RD, Zou XY, Cheng H, Wu XX, Zhang CL, Kang LQ (2014) Spatial distribution and source apportionment of atmospheric dust fall at Beijing during spring of 2008–2009. Environ Sci Pollut Res 1–11: DOI 10.1007/s11356-014-3583-3
Wang W, Wang Y, Su HM, Pan Z, Yue X, Liu HJ, Tang DG (2001) Acidity and acid buffering capacity of aerosols during sand-dust storm weather in Beijing. Environ Sci 22(5):25–28 (in Chinese)
Wang W, Zhao DS, Chen YZ, Tang DG, Jiang ZG, Han YJ, Ning J (1988) Research of Interaction between Aerosol and Precipitation. Res Environ Sci 1(1):38–44 (in Chinese)
Wang WX, Zhang WH, Shi Q, Hong SX, Yue YZ (1993) Study on factors related to acidity of rain water in China. China Environ Sci 13(1):401–407 (in Chinese)
Wang ZF, Akimoto H, Uno I (2002) Neutralization of soil aerosol and its impact on the distribution of acid rain over east Asia: Observations and model results. J Geophys Res: Atmos 107, doi:10.1029/2001JD001040
Xuan J, Liu GL, Du K (2000) Dust emission inventory in Northern China. Atmos Environ 34(26):4565–4570
Yao WL, Chen Z, Xiang YC (2010) Trends in climate extremes in association with climate warming in Wuhan. Meteorol Mon 36(11):88–94 (in Chinese)
Yu TR (1998) The acidity characters and acidification of soil in China. Chinese J Soil Sci 19(2):49–51 (in Chinese)
Zhang XY, Zhang GY, Zhu GH, Zhang DE, An ZS, Chen T, Huang XP (1996) Elemental tracers for Chinese source dust. Sci China Ser D 39(5):512–521
Zhu HY, Liu SY, Jia SF (2004) Problems of the spatial interpolation of physical geographical elements. Geogr Res 23(4):425–432 (in Chinese)
Zhuang GS, Guo JH, Yuan H, Zhao CY (2001) The compositions, sources, and size distribution of the dust storm from China in spring of 2000 and its impact on the global environment. Chinese Sci Bull 46(11):895–900
Acknowledgments
This work was funded by the Key Program of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41330746), Fund for Creative Research Groups of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41321001), and the program of China Equipment and Education Resources System (Grant No. CERS-1-109). The authors greatly appreciate the assistance of English Language Editing Services from Elsevier Webshop Support for the language editing.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Wang, R., Li, J., Wang, J. et al. Influence of dust storms on atmospheric particulate pollution and acid rain in northern China. Air Qual Atmos Health 10, 297–306 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-016-0421-4
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-016-0421-4