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Blowing dust across Mongolia and China

By Scott Bachmeier •

Himawari-9 Dust RGB images, from 2100 UTC on 20 March to 2350 UTC on 22 March [click to play MP4 animation]

JMA Himawari-9 Dust RGB images created using Geo2Grid (above) spanned the period from 2100 UTC on 20 March to 2350 UTC on 22 March 2023 — and showed a large area of dense blowing dust (brighter shades of magenta to pink) across parts of eastern Mongolia and northern/northeastern China (eventually crossing the China/Russia border). This Gobi Desert dust was lofted by strong winds produced by the tight pressure gradient between high pressure that was moving from Russia into western Mongolia and low pressure that was drifting from eastern Mongolia to northeastern China (KMA surface analyses: GIF | MP4).

A longer Dust RGB animation showed an additional pulse of blowing dust originating from the Taklamakan Desert on 19 March.

The Himawari-9 Split Window Difference product (below) showed that this blowing dust (brighter shades of yellow to cyan/blue to red) restricted the surface visibility to 1 mile or less at some sites during the period from 0000 UTC on 21 March to 0000 UTC on 23 March.

Himawari-9 Split Window Difference product, from 0000 UTC on 21 March to 0000 UTC on 23 March [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

Himawari-9 True Color RGB images, from 2210 UTC on 20 March to 0950 UTC on 21 March [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

Himawari-9 True Color RGB images (above) showed the initial formation of blowing dust plmes (shades of tan) from 2210 UTC on 20 March to 0950 UTC on 21 March — which later became entrained into the aforementioned low pressure system (as it was centered over far northeastern China) during the period from 2210 UTC on 21 March to 0950 UTC on 22 March (below). An animation which combines these 2 daytime periods (20-21 March, and 21-22 March) is available here.

Himawari-9 True Color RGB images, from 2210 UTC on 21 March to 0950 UTC on 22 March [click to play animated GIF | MP4]

Similar cases of dust entrainment into the circulation of a midlatitude cyclone in this region were documented in blog posts from May 2021 and May 2019.

Categories: Air quality, Geo2Grid, Himawari-9, Red-Green-Blue (RGB) images