title: Polluted dust derived from long-range transport as a major end member of urban aerosols and its implication of non-point pollution in northern China.
abstract: The contribution of polluted dust transported from local and distal sources remains poorly constrained due to their similar geophysical and geochemical properties. We sampled aerosols in three cities in northern China (Xi'an, Beijing, Xifeng) during the spring of 2009 to determine dust flux, magnetic susceptibility and elemental concentrations. Combining dust fluxes with wind speed and regional visibility records enabled to differentiate between dust transported from long range and derived from local sources, while the combination of magnetic susceptibility and enrichment factors (EF) of heavy metals (Pb, Zn) allowed to distinguish natural aerosols from polluted ones. Our results indicate that polluted dust from long-range transport became a major end member of urban dust aerosols. Human settlements as its potential sources were confirmed by a pollutant enriched regional dust event originating from populated areas to the south as inferred by back trajectory modeling, implying their non-point source nature of dust pollution.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China. Electronic address: yanyan@ieecas.cn.
authors.forename: Y
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Yan
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an, China; Institute of Global Environmental Change, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China. Electronic address: sunyb@ieecas.cn.
authors.forename: Y B
authors.initials: YB
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.affiliation: Earth Science and Engineering, Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK; School of Earth Science, Stanford University, Panama Mall, CA 94304, USA.
authors.forename: D
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Weiss
authors.affiliation: Institute of Geology, China Earthquake Administration, Beijing, China.
authors.forename: L J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Liang
authors.affiliation: The Institute of Hydrogeology and Environmental Geology, Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, China.
authors.forename: H Y
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Chen
mesh_terms: D000336:Aerosols / Q000032:analysis*; D000393:Air Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D000397:Air Pollution / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D002681:China; D004391:Dust / Q000032:analysis*; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D019216:Metals, Heavy / Q000032:analysis; D014919:Wind
chemical_list: D000336:Aerosols; D000393:Air Pollutants; D004391:Dust; D019216:Metals, Heavy
keywords: Non-point dust pollution; Northern China; Polluted dust from long-range transport; Urban dust aerosols