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Abstract
A new approach is developed for quick detection of sand and dust storms (SDSs) over arid and semi-arid regions of the northwestern part of China, where the bright-reflecting source areas of Asian dust outbreaks are located. The Asian dust particles, once with proper conditions, can even transport across the Pacific Ocean and reach the USA and Canada. Remote-sensing data products of mineral dust near its source are deficient because of the radiance contributions of the bright surface. In this article, based on Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) measurements, consecutive separation of dust cloud from bright underlying surface and water/ice cloud is completed by utilizing a refined cloud mask algorithm and the normalized difference dust index (NDDI). Thresholds are determined through statistical analysis of MODIS measurements over the Taklimakan and Gobi deserts. Validations with ground observations over the sites in Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang in China demonstrated good performance of the proposed method in separating SDS from bright surface and cloud.
Acknowledgements
Funding for this work was provided by the 973 Programme of the Ministry of Science & Technology of China (grant number 2006CB403700), the Key Laboratory of Meteorological Disaster of the Ministry of Education (grant numbers KLME05006 and KLME060202) and the Graduate Student Innovation Plan in the Universities of Jiangsu Province (grant number CX10B_293Z). The authors thank the reviewers and the editor for their constructive comments.
Notes
**This work was carried out during a half year visit by Dan Xu to George Mason University.