As the annual phenomenon once again strikes East Asia, scientists are hard at work to better predict how they will affect people. A dust storm occurs when strong winds sweep across dry areas, such as deserts, picking up dust particles from the ground and lifting them into the air, sometimes to as high as 1,500 meters. To refine forecasting, Jin Jianbing, an atmospheric scientist at the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology in China, and his colleagues have developed a 48-hour forecast, called Dust Assimilation and Prediction System (DAPS). Although climate change has increased the frequency and intensity of many extreme weather events worldwide, its relationship with dust storms is more complicated. To really reduce dust storms with the help of science, what we need is solid financial support, human resources and the attention of governments and the public.
With the arrival of the Northern Hemisphere spring, many Asian countries are facing an annual problem: dust storms. Late last month, people living in parts of China’s Inner Mongolia saw their skies turn murky yellow, according to state media. Residents were told to stay indoors as wind speeds reached 100 kilometres per hour and visibility reduced to less than 90 metres. Over the weekend, people in Beijing were warned to shut windows and take precautions as dust approached the city after sweeping through parts of Mongolia and Inner Mongolia.
Since the 1990s, Chinese scientists have carried out extensive research on dust storms and developed several forecasting systems. But challenges remain. Scientists want to more accurately predict when and where dust is being picked up, how much of it is being picked up and how the dust load changes. Current systems still sometimes make errors.
Researchers in the region have been applying artificial intelligence (AI) and climate modelling to better predict this annual phenomenon. Better prediction could save tens of millions of yuan each year. In the first quarter of 2021 alone, dust storms caused losses worth more than 30 million yuan (US$4.15 million) in northern China, including damages to farms and houses.
According to Wang Zifa, an atmospheric physicist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, the effects of dust storms are particularly severe in East Asia, owing to the region’s dense population.
“In East Asia, dust storms often originate in the Gobi Desert and move across populous areas, such as China’s Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei urban cluster, the Korean Peninsula and Japan,” says Wang.
To refine forecasting, Jin Jianbing, an atmospheric scientist at the Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology in China, and his colleagues have developed a 48-hour forecast, called Dust Assimilation and Prediction System (DAPS).
Data assimilation is a process that dynamically integrates observational data with model calculations to enhance the accuracy of predictions. “It almost acts like an autopilot for the model,” Jin says.
Jin’s team also employed AI. “We used several deep-learning models to remove bias in the original observations before using them for assimilation to improve the accuracy of the results.” He adds that AI can be “very helpful” in optimizing dust storm forecasts.
DAPS can give detailed predictions, such as how the dust would spread in affected areas and how concentrated it would be, on a microgram scale. It covers five countries in East Asia: China, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea and Japan.
Sources:
NATURE
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-01076-7 .
Provided by the IKCEST Disaster Risk Reduction Knowledge Service System
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