Abstract
The Middle East frontal sand and dust storms (SDS) occur in non-summer seasons, and represent an important phenomenon of this region’s climate. Among the mentioned type, spring SDS are the most common. Trend analysis was used in the current study to investigate the spatial-temporal variability of springtime dust events in the Middle East using synoptic station observation from 2011 to 2022. The plausible changes in some controlling factors of dust activity at selected important dust sources in the Middle East were also studied during this time period. Our results showed a statistically significant spike in springtime dust events across the Middle East, particularly in May 2022. To evaluate the relative importance of controlling factors, the applied feature of importance analysis using random forest (RF) showed the higher relative importance of topsoil layer wetness, surface soil temperature, and surface wind speed in dust activity over the Middle East between 2011 and 2022. Long-term trend analysis of topsoil moisture and temperature, using the Mann-Kendall trend test, showed a decrease in soil moisture and an increase in soil temperature in some selected important dust sources in the Middle East. Moreover, our predictions using ARIMA models showed a high tendency to dust activities in selected major dust origins (domain 2 and domain 5) with a statistically significant increase (p-value < 0.05) between 2023 and 2029. Observed spatial and temporal changes within SDS hotspots can act as the first step to build up for the first time an SDS precise intensity scale, as well as establishing an SDS early warning system in future.
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The authors acknowledge the financial support provided in part by the Faculty Development Competitive Research Grant (FDCRG), Nazarbayev University (Project No. 201223FD8811) and the Collaborative Research Project (CRP) grant, Nazarbayev University (Project No. 11022021CRP1512).
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Parya Broomandi: supervision, writing — original draft, conceptualization, methodology, validation, formal analysis, investigation, data curation. David Galán-Madruga: methodology, data analysis, data curation, formal analysis, review and editing. Alfrendo Satyanaga: resources, data curation, data analysis, investigation, project administration, funding acquisition, review and editing. Mehdi Hamidi: data curation, validation, review and editing. Dorna Gholamzade Ledari: conceptualization, methodology, writing — original draft, data curation. Aram Fathian: conceptualization, methodology, data curation, formal analysis. Rasoul Sarvestan: data analysis, data curation. Nasime Janatian: data analysis, data curation. Ali Jahanbakhshi: data analysis, data curation. Mehdi Bagheri: resources, data curation, project administration, funding acquisition. Ferhat Karaca: methodology, validation, review and editing. Ali Al-Dousari: supervision, validation, review and editing. Jong Ryeol Kim: resources, data curation, project administration, funding acquisition.
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Broomandi, P., Galán-Madruga, D., Satyanaga, A. et al. Variability of Middle East springtime dust events between 2011 and 2022. Air Qual Atmos Health (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-024-01510-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-024-01510-9