Estimations of anthropogenic dust emissions at global scale from 2007 to 2010

Abstract. Dust emissions refer to the spatial displacement of dust particles from wind forcing, which is a key component of dust circulation. It plays an important role in the energy, hydrological, and carbon cycles of the Earth's systems. However, most dust emission schemes only consider natural dust, neglecting anthropogenic dust induced by human activities, which led to large uncertainties in quantitative estimations of dust emissions in numerical modeling. To fully consider the mechanisms of anthropogenic dust emissions, both indirect and direct anthropogenic dust emission schemes were constructed and developed in the study. Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) retrievals were used to constrain the simulations at global scale. The results showed that the schemes reasonably reproduced the spatio-temporal distributions of anthropogenic dust from 2007 to 2010. The high centers of anthropogenic dust emission flux appeared in India, eastern China, North America, and Africa range from 0.9 to 11 μg m⁻² s⁻¹. Compared with natural dust emissions, indirect anthropogenic dust emissions have indistinctive seasonal variation, with differences less than 3.2 μg m⁻² s⁻¹. Pasturelands contribute higher anthropogenic dust emissions than croplands, with emissions of approximately 6.8 μg m⁻² s⁻¹, accounting for 60 % of indirect anthropogenic dust emissions. Moreover, average anthropogenic dust emissions in urban areas have a value of 13.5 μg m⁻² s⁻¹, which is higher than those in rural areas (7.9 μg m⁻² s⁻¹). This study demonstrates that the environmental problems caused by anthropogenic dust in urban areas cannot be ignored.