Abstract
In this paper, we analyzed the variations of dust proxies in the Dunde, Malan and Chongce ice cores from the northern Tibetan Plateau and the Hongjiannao lacustrine sediment core from north Shaanxi Province, and found that they all showed a general decrease trend over the past century. Owing to the fact that all these ice cores and lacustrine core were retrieved from the margins and/or the leeward sides of the major areas of dust events in north China, their records could suggest that the dust event frequency in north China declined over the study period. This decrease trend might be attributed to increasing precipitation and weakening westerly. However, human activities have made the areal extent of desertification expand acceleratingly in north China. This status could make it possible that dust events would occur on a large spatial scale under the future climate change, which would be a big environmental issue we shall face.
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Supported by the Centurial Program (Grant No. 2004401) and the Innovation Research Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. KZCX3-SW-339-3), Chinese NSF (Grant Nos.40525001 and 40121101) and the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No. 2005CB422003)
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Wang, N., Yao, T., Yang, X. et al. Variations in dust event frequency over the past century reflected by ice-core and lacustrine records in north China. Sci. China Ser. D-Earth Sci. 50, 736–744 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-007-0037-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11430-007-0037-5