Dust storms and sandy dust events originating in arid and semi-arid areas can transport particulate material, pollutants, and potential transport long distances from their sources. Exposure to desert dust particles is generally acknowledged to endanger human health. However, most studies have examined anthropogenic particulate sources, with few studies considering contributions from natural desert dust. A systematic literature review was undertaken using the ISI Web of Knowledge and PubMed databases with the objective of identifying all studies presenting results on the potential health impact from desert dust particles across the world. This review reveals an imbalance between the areas most exposed to dust and the areas most studied in terms of health effects. Among the human health effects of dust storms are mortality and morbidity, arising from respiratory system, circulatory system, and other diseases. We summarize the quantitative results of current scientific health research and possible pathological mechanisms, and describe some of the many challenges related to understanding health effects from exposures to desert dust particles. Overall, for respiratory and circulatory mortality, both positive and negative associations have been reported for PM₁₀ of desert dust, but only a positive relationship was reported between PM_2.5–10 and mortality, and a positive relationship was also reported between PM_2.5 and human mortality. Future pathological studies should continue to focus on those mechanisms causing the most harmful effect of desert dust on respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. More attention should also be paid to the association between desert dust and the morbidity of other diseases, such as those affecting the reproductive system and nervous system.

Light‐absorbing impurities (LAIs) in snow of the southeastern Tibetan Plateau (TP) and their climatic impacts are of interest not only because this region borders areas affected by the South Asian atmospheric brown clouds but also because the seasonal snow and glacier melt from this region form important headwaters of large rivers. In this study, we collected surface snow and snowpit samples from four glaciers in the southeastern TP in June 2015 to investigate the comprehensive observational data set of LAIs. Results showed that the LAI concentrations were much higher in the aged snow and granular ice than in the fresh snow and snowpits due to postdepositional processes. Impurity concentrations fluctuated across snowpits, with maximum LAI concentrations frequently occurring toward the bottom of snowpits. Based on the SNow ICe Aerosol Radiative model, the albedo simulation indicated that black carbon and dust account for approximately 20% of the albedo reduction relative to clean snow. The radiative forcing caused by black carbon and dust deposition on the glaciers were between 1.0–141 W m⁻² and 1.5–120 W m⁻², respectively. Black carbon (BC) played a larger role in albedo reduction and radiative forcing than dust in the study area, enhancing approximately 15% of glacier melt. Analysis based on the Fire INventory from NCAR indicated that nonbiomass‐burning sources of BC played an important role in the total BC deposition, especially during the monsoon season. This study suggests that eliminating anthropogenic BC could mitigate glacier melt in the future of the southeastern TP.

Iron oxide compounds constitute an important component of mineral dust aerosols. Several previous studies have shown that these minerals are strong absorbers at visible wavelengths and thus that they play a critical role in the overall climate perturbation caused by dust aerosols. When compiling a database of complex refractive indices of possible mineral species of iron oxides to study their optical properties, we found that uniformly continuous optical constants for a single type of iron oxide in the wavelength range between 0.2 and 50 μm are very scarce, and that the use of hematite to represent all molecular or mineral iron-oxides types is a popular hypothesis. However, the crucial problem is that three continuous data sets for complex refractive indices of hematite are employed in climate models, but there are significant differences between them. Thus, the real role of iron oxides in the optical properties of dust aerosols becomes a key scientific question, and we address this problem by considering different refractive indices, size distributions and more logical weight fractions and mixing states of hematite. Based on the microscopic observations, a semi-external mixture that employs an external mixture between Fe aggregates and other minerals and partly internal mixing between iron oxides and aluminosilicate particles is advised as the optimal approximation. The simulations demonstrate that hematite with a spectral refractive index from Longtin et al. (1988) shows approximately equal absorbing capacity to the mineral illite over the whole wavelength region from 0.55 to 2.5 μm, and only enhances the optical absorption of aerosol mixture at λ < 0.55 μm. Using the data set from Querry (1985) may overestimate the optical absorption of hematite at both visible and near-infrared wavelengths. More laboratory measurements of the refractive index of iron oxides, especially for hematite and goethite in the visible spectrum, should therefore be taken into account when assessing the effect of mineral dust on climate forcing.

With the continuous rapid urbanization process over the last three decades, outdoors air pollution has become a progressively more serious public health hazard in China. To investigate the possible associations, lag effects and seasonal differences of urban air quality on respiratory health (allergic rhinitis) in Changchun, a city in Northeastern China, we carried out a time-series analysis of the incidents of allergic rhinitis (AR) from 2013 to 2015. Environmental monitoring showed that PM_2.5 and PM₁₀ were the major air pollutants in Changchun, followed by SO₂, NO₂ and O₃. The results also demonstrated that the daily concentrations of air pollutants had obvious seasonal differences. PM₁₀ had higher daily mean concentrations in spring (May, dust storms), autumn (October, straw burning) and winter (November to April, coal burning). The mean daily number of outpatient AR visits in the warm season was higher than in the cold season. The prevalence of allergic rhinitis was significantly associated with PM_2.5, PM₁₀, SO₂ and NO₂, and the increased mobility was 10.2% (95% CI, 5.5%–15.1%), 4.9% (95% CI, 0.8%–9.2%), 8.5% (95% CI, −1.8%–19.8%) and 11.1% (95% CI, 5.8%–16.5%) for exposure to each 1-Standard Deviation (1-SD) increase of pollutant, respectively. Weakly or no significant associations were observed for CO and O₃. As for lag effects, the highest Relative Risks (RRs) of AR from SO₂, NO₂, PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 were on the same day, and the highest RR from CO was on day 4 (L4). The results also indicated that the concentration of air pollutants might contribute to the development of AR. To summarize, this study provides further evidence of the significant association between ambient particulate pollutants (PM_2.5 and PM₁₀, which are usually present in high concentrations) and the prevalence of respiratory effects (allergic rhinitis) in the city of Changchun, located in Northeastern China. Environmental control and public health strategies should be enforced to address this increasingly challenging problem.

A snow survey was carried out to collect 13 surface snow samples (10 for fresh snow, and 3 for aged snow) and 79 subsurface snow samples in seasonal snow at 13 sites across northeastern China in January 2014. A spectrophotometer combined with chemical analysis was used to quantify snow particulate absorption by insoluble light-absorbing particles (ILAPs, e.g., black carbon, BC; mineral dust, MD; and organic carbon, OC) in snow. Snow albedo was measured using a field spectroradiometer. A new radiative transfer model (Spectral Albedo Model for Dirty Snow, or SAMDS) was then developed to simulate the spectral albedo of snow based on the asymptotic radiative transfer theory. A comparison between SAMDS and an existing model – the Snow, Ice, and Aerosol Radiation (SNICAR) – indicates good agreements in the model-simulated spectral albedos of pure snow. However, the SNICAR model values tended to be slightly lower than those of SAMDS when BC and MD were considered. Given the measured BC, MD, and OC mixing ratios of 100–5000, 2000–6000, and 1000–30 000 ng g⁻¹, respectively, in surface snow across northeastern China, the SAMDS model produced a snow albedo in the range of 0.95–0.75 for fresh snow at 550 nm, with a snow grain optical effective radius (R_eff) of 100 µm. The snow albedo reduction due to spherical snow grains assumed to be aged snow is larger than fresh snow such as fractal snow grains and hexagonal plate or column snow grains associated with the increased BC in snow. For typical BC mixing ratios of 100 ng g⁻¹ in remote areas and 3000 ng g⁻¹ in heavy industrial areas across northern China, the snow albedo for internal mixing of BC and snow is lower by 0.005 and 0.036 than that of external mixing for hexagonal plate or column snow grains with R_eff of 100 µm. These results also show that the simulated snow albedos by both SAMDS and SNICAR agree well with the observed values at low ILAP mixing ratios but tend to be higher than surface observations at high ILAP mixing ratios.