Two Case Studies of the Transport of Dust Storm Aerosol and the Potential for Incorporation into Precipitation

Abstract

To investigate the hypothesis that dust storms enhanced the calcium concentrations in precipitation in the mid-1950s, two case studies were performed for major dust events in the southern Plains of the United States during March and April of 1981. Forward trajectories were calculated from source areas of blowing dust and then compared with hourly radar summaries to see if the advected dust cloud intercepted precipitation over sites of the National Atmospheric Deposition Program. Four sites met these criteria between the two case studies and exhibited extremely high calcium concentration and deposition values for the study period.