Evaluation of dust sources in Iran through remote sensing and synoptical analysis

Mineral dusts, as the most important type of aerosols, play an important role in climate forcing and terribly affect human health, living in the vicinity of large persistent emission sources; especially located in the and or hyper and regions of Middle Eastern countries like Iran. In this paper, we systematically examine the TOMS satellite absorbing aerosol product (AI) over a 25-year period (1979-2004) for the evidence of local persistent dust sources, and simultaneously evaluate the most related synoptical parameters to dust emission derived from data records of more than 150 synoptical weather stations located all around the country. The TOMS satellite data show that on a global scale the dominant sources of mineral dust are mainly located in the vicinity of salt/dry lakes or large basins of internal drainage which are assumed to be very prone sources of dusts.