Double Trouble of Air Pollution by Anthropogenic Dust.

Wenwen Xia, Yong Wang, Siyu Chen, Jianping Huang, Bin Wang, Guang J Zhang, Yue Zhang, Xiaohong Liu, Jianmin Ma, Peng Gong, Yiquan Jiang, Mingxuan Wu, Jinkai Xue, Linyi Wei, Tinghan Zhang

Environmental science & technology 2022 Jan 18

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With urbanization worldwide in recent decades, anthropogenic dust (AD) emissions due to heavy urban construction and off-road vehicle use have been increasing. Its perturbations on urban air pollution at the global scale are still unclear. Based on observations, we found that a high urban AD optical depth is often accompanied by severe non-dust aerosol optical depth in the planetary boundary layer (PBL), both magnitudes even comparable. To investigate the causes, an AD emission inventory constrained by satellite retrievals is implemented in a global climate model. The results show that AD-induced surface radiative cooling of up to -15.9 ± 4.0 W m-2 regionally leads to reduced PBL height, which deteriorates non-dust pollution, especially over India and northern China, in addition to the tremendous direct AD contribution to pollutants. The estimated global total premature mortality due to AD is 0.8 million deaths per year and is more severe in populous regions.

Citation

Wenwen Xia, Yong Wang, Siyu Chen, Jianping Huang, Bin Wang, Guang J Zhang, Yue Zhang, Xiaohong Liu, Jianmin Ma, Peng Gong, Yiquan Jiang, Mingxuan Wu, Jinkai Xue, Linyi Wei, Tinghan Zhang. Double Trouble of Air Pollution by Anthropogenic Dust. Environmental science & technology. 2022 Jan 18;56(2):761-769