The biggest sand-dust storm from Mongolia in the past decade swept across northern China on March 15, 2021. Before this sudden outbreak, the number of sand-dust storms in northern China had been decreasing for 50 years. Wind and sand resources are the two key elements for sand-dust storms to occur. With an abrupt shift to a drier and hotter climate in the past 20 years over inner East Asia providing more sand resources and an increasing wind speed trend, the sand-dust storm in 2021 may herald the beginning of an era with more sand-dust storms. To answer whether increasing wind speed will significantly influence the sand-dust storm frequency, this study analyzed the relationship between the annual average wind speed and sand-dust storm days in northern China and Mongolia, finding that they have a high correlation (R = 0.94) in northern China and a moderate correlation (R = 0.41) in Mongolia. We further found that the wind speed during sand-dust storms also decreased, which further supports that the decrease of sand-dust storm frequency is mainly reasoned from the decrease of wind speed. Therefore, as the wind speed increases, the sandstorm frequency can increase as well, which has been seen clearly in Mongolia but may be just beginning in China.

In situ surface wind observation is a critical meteorological data source for various research fields. However, data quality is affected by factors such as surface friction changes, station relocations and anemometer updates. Previous methods to address discontinuities have been insufficient, and processing methods have not always adhered to World Meteorological Organization (WMO) World Climate Programme guidelines. We analyzed data discontinuity caused by anemometer changes and station relocations in China's daily in situ near-surface (∼ 10 m) wind speed observations and the impact of the processing methods on wind speed trends. By comparing the wind speed discontinuities with the recorded location changes, we identified 90 stations that showed abnormally increasing wind speeds due to relocation. After removing those stations, we followed a standard quality control method recommended by the World Meteorological Organization to improve the data reliability and applied Thiessen polygons to calculate the area-weighted average wind speed. The result shows that China's recent reversal of wind speed was reduced by 41 % after removing the problematic stations, with an increasing trend of 0.017 m s⁻¹ yr⁻¹ (R² = 0.64, P < 0.05), emphasizing the importance of robust quality control and homogenization protocols in wind trend assessments.

A global bottom-up assessment identifies 18.82 ± 2.66 PWh of viable pumped hydroelectric storage, showing that PHS remains cost-effective for discharge durations longer than four hours under future energy storage technology cost scenarios.

In-situ surface wind observation is a critical meteorological data source for various research fields. However, data quality is affected by factors such as surface friction changes, station relocations, and anemometer updates. Previous methods to address discontinuities have been insufficient, and processing methods have not always adhered to World Meteorological Organization (WMO) guidelines. We analyzed data discontinuity caused by anemometer changes and station relocations in China’s daily in-situ near-surface (~10 m) wind speed observations and the impact of the processing methods on wind speed trends. By comparing the wind speed discontinuities with the recorded location changes, we identified 90 stations that showed abnormally increasing wind speeds due to relocation. After removing those stations, we followed a standard quality control method recommended by the World Meteorological Organization to improve the data reliability and applied Thiessen Polygons to calculate the area-weighted average wind speed. The result shows that China's recent reversal of wind speed was reduced by 41 % after removing the problematic stations, with an increasing trend of 0.017 m s⁻¹ year⁻¹ (R² = 0.64, P < 0.05), emphasizing the importance of robust quality control and homogenization protocols in wind trend assessments.