The westerlies circulation passing over Central Asian region transports the aerosol emitted over this region towards the mountain ranges in Tianshan and the Himalayas-Tibetan Plateau. The regional and transboundary transport and deposition of aerosols on the snow and glaciers over these mountain ranges will influence the lives of billions of people residing downstream who are directly or indirectly dependent on the water originated from those glaciers. However not much is known about the aerosol physical and optical properties over the Central Asia. 

Recently, a research group led by Prof. KANG Shichang from Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources of Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with scientists from Germany and Tajikistan investigated the columnar aerosol properties, their radiative forcing and associated heating rate over Dushanbe, the capital city of Tajikistan utilizing the data collected during 2010-2018. A CIMEL sunphotometer was installed under AERONET project of NASA in 2010 at Dushanbe to study the aerosol optical properties.  

They analyzed the seasonal variations in aerosol optical depth and discussed the possible reasons for such variations. Aerosol properties like volume size distribution, single scattering albedo, asymmetry parameter and refractive index has also been investigated in this study.  

Besides, most of the air masses reaching Dushanbe transported local and regional emissions, including from beyond Central Asia, explaining the presence of various aerosol types in Dushanbe’s atmosphere.  

High aerosol radiative forcing and heating rate values indicate that atmospheric aerosols could exert significant implications to regional air quality, climate and cryosphere over the central Asian region and downwind Tianshan and Himalaya-Tibetan Plateau mountain regions with sensitive ecosystems. 

This study is the first time to report directly observed aerosol radiative forcing, an important parameter to understand the influence of aerosols on the climate, and their seasonal variations in the region, which has been published on the Environmental Pollution in an article entitled “Columnar aerosol properties and radiative effects over Dushanbe, Tajikistan in Central Asia”.  

Contact:  

KANG Shichang  

shichang.kang@lzb.ac.cn  

State Key Laboratory of Cryospheric Science, Northwest Institute of Eco- Environment and Resources, Chinese Academy of Science (CAS), Lanzhou 730000, PR China.