The heating effect of dust aerosol on air temperature in the surface layer in the hinterland of Taklimakan Desert

The data was recorded including air temperature, radiation, PM10, concentration of black carbon (BC) and scattering coefficient of sand dust in the hinterland of Taklimakan Desert from 2006 Aug.1 to 2007 Jul. 31. Combination with the conventional meteorological data, weather types were divided into four categories, as blowing dust, dust storm, floating dust and clear sky. Cloudy days were removed and the temperature of clear sky was set as an atmospheric background value in each dust progress to analyse heating effect of dust on air in the surface layer. The results show that daily average temperature in the blowing dust was higher than the clear sky by 3.4℃ and 3.8℃ in winter and spring respectively. The dust also increased atmospheric inverse radiation which was as 1.24 times as the clear sky. The dust influenced the distribution of the temperature gradient of air in the surface layer, it shortened the time and weakened the intensity of temperature inversion. The large particles as PM10 increasing significantly in spring, absorptive particles rising strongly in winter, and small particles augmenting greatly in summer and autumn all lead to the heating effect though in a different way. Changes of temperature gradient in blowing dust were decreasing with the increasing PM 10 , which was caused mainly by the air temperature variation below 10 m height. In floating dust, it was significantly correlative with small particles, and its influencing heights were much higher than the other weather types, which exceeded 32 m.