The response of sand-dust weather to climate change in Xinjiang, China

Using the observations from 8 weather stations in northern Xinjiang, eight weather stations in southern Xinjiang and 8 weather stations in Tianshan Mountains area, we analyzed changing features of sandstorm, floating dust, blowing-sand. The observations were collected from 1961-2000 in Xinjiang, China. The results show that southern Xinjiang was the area where sandstorm and blowing-sand occurred more often, and the occurrence was 3-5 times higher than those in northern Xinjiang. Days of floating-dust appearing in southern Xinjiang were 50 times more than those in northern Xinjiang; in Tianshan Mountains area sand-dust weather appeared less. In the last 40 years, the long-term change trend of these sand-dust weather in southern Xinjiang was similar to those in northern Xinjiang, that had been obviously decreasing since the 1990's; the total days of sand-dust weather in southern Xinjiang in spring had a linear relationship with air temperature and precipitation of the same period, respectively.