Impacts of the Desiccation of the Aral Sea on the Central Asian Dust Life‐Cycle

The formation of the Aralkum (Aral Desert), following the severe desiccation of the former Aral Sea since the 1960s, has created what may be regarded as one of the world's most significant anthropogenic dust sources. In this paper, focusing on dust emission and transport patterns from the Aralkum, the dust life‐cycle has been simulated over Central Asia using the aerosol transport model COSMO‐MUSCAT (COnsortium for Small‐scale MOdelling‐MUltiScale Chemistry Aerosol Transport Model), making use of the Global Surface Water data set to take into account the sensitivity to changes in surface water coverage over the region between the 1980s (the “past”) and the 2010s (the “present”). Over a case study 1‐year period, the simulated dust emissions from the Aralkum region increased from 14.3 to 27.1 Tg year⁻¹ between the past and present, an increase driven solely by the changes in the surface water environment. Of these simulated modern emissions, 14.5 Tg are driven by westerly winds, indicating that regions downwind to the east may be worst affected by Aralkum dust. However a high degree of interannual variability in the prevailing surface wind patterns ensures that these transport patterns of Aralkum dust do not occur every year. Frequent cloud cover poses substantial challenges for observations of Central Asian dust: in the Aralkum, over two‐thirds of the yearly emissions are emitted under overcast skies, dust which may be impossible to observe using traditional satellite or ground‐based passive remote sensing techniques. Furthermore, it is apparent that the pattern of dust transport from the Aralkum under clear‐sky conditions is not representative of the pattern under all‐sky conditions.

Plain Language Summary: Since the 1960s the Central Asian lake that used to be known as the Aral Sea has almost completely dried out, due to human activity. This environmental disaster has created a new desert known as the Aralkum (the “Aral Desert”), which now has a size of 245 km × 245 km across. Dried lakes such as the Aralkum can be very effective sources of wind‐driven atmospheric dust. The soils of the Aralkum are also contaminated with agricultural chemicals from nearby croplands, making the Aralkum a major regional threat to human health. Using an atmospheric computer model, we explore the consequences of the new Aralkum for the patterns of atmospheric dust and their potential impacts in Central Asia. We find that the new Aralkum has contributed an extra 7% per year to the total dust quantity over Central Asia, however due to thick cloud cover over two thirds of this dust from the Aralkum cannot be seen by Earth‐observing satellites. The wind patterns over the Aralkum vary from year to year, so while our simulations predict that most of the Aralkum's dust is transported to the east during the simulation year, during other years plenty more dust will be transported elsewhere.

Key Points: The impact of changes in surface water coverage over the Aralkum (the former Aral Sea) for dust emission and transport is investigated. There is a high degree of interannual variability in the directions of dust‐emitting winds over the Aralkum. Over two thirds of Aralkum dust activity occurs under thick cloud cover, limiting the possibility of it being observed by satellites.

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100001659

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6022747

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