Dust storm, the most common natural disaster in the arid and semi-arid regions, is characterized with suddenness and wide impact coverage, seriously threatening ecosystems and human lives. In recent years, driven by global warming, population increase and over-grazing, soil erosion over the Mongolian Plateau has been intensified. Moreover, the Mongolian Plateau has gradually been proved to be an important dust source over the East Asia, which has contributed 42% of dust concentration to northern China in the spring of 2023. 

Several severe dust storms from Mongolian Plateau have frequently swept the East Asia in this spring. Dust frequency since January in northern China has been the highest in the same period in nearly 10 years, which attract people’s attention in understanding the characteristics and causes of dust storm from Mongolian Plateau. Numerous researches has been carried out to systematically study the effect of Mongolian cyclone on the dust emission and dust transport over the East Asia. However, dust radiative feedback on dust lifetime and the contribution of various physical processes in the feedback remains unclear. In addition, the land cover of the Mongolian Plateau is complex and diverse, and the traditional numerical models employ static dust sources, ignoring the effect of climate change and human activities on wind erosion, which seriously limits the simulation accuracy of dust radiative feedback.

To solve the above outstanding questions, the present study employ the time-varying NDVI to construct a global-scale dynamic dust source and reproduce the dynamic dust activity of land cover, which improve the dust simulation over the Mongolian Plateau. With satellite remote sensing, ground observations and WRF-Chem coupled with dynamic dust source, this study carry out a numerical simulation of a severe dust storm in May,2019. Mongolian cyclone and southward cold air were important weather factors affecting this dust event. Gobi Desert, the main contributor to the atmospheric dust concentration in this dust event, has a stronger dust lifting ability, and its dust concentration (14.2µg m⁻³) and dust concentration ratio (3.9%) in the lower middle troposphere (3-10 km) were larger than that with the Taklimakan Desert. As a typical absorbing aerosol, dust aerosol could warm the atmosphere by absorbing solar short-wave radiation, changing the atmospheric thermal structure. Dust radiative effect on atmospheric heating rate was consistent with dust concentration vertically. The atmospheric heating rate was 0.33K day^-1 at 700hPa in northern China. Moreover, atmospheric dust radiative forcing in central Inner Mongolia was larger than 18 W m^-2.

We further found that dust radiative feedback enhance the high pressure ridge in northeast China and intensify the zonal temperature and pressure gradient. Therefore, the Mongolian cyclone developed rapidly. Based on the thermodynamic equation, it is found that dust radiative feedback affects the zonal wind, cools the middle and low troposphere and warms the upper troposphere over northeast of Mongolia. Therefore, the atmospheric thermal structure had been changed, pushing the cold air into the bottom of warm air in the shape of a wedge, rising the warm air along with the cold ones. Dust radiative feedback makes the upper momentum transfer downward by influencing the vertical winds. The Mongolian cyclone had been intensified by atmospheric thermal structure change and downward momentum, extending the dust lifetime and enhancing the eastward transport of dust, which finally aggravate the air pollution to the downstream regions.

This study has important scientific significance for understanding the importance of Gobi Desert and highlights dust-weather feedback on dust lifetime, which enhance our ability to mitigate dust disaster over the East Asia.