Abstract: Dust aerosols have a significant impact on the local atmospheric environment. Based on the satellite/groundbased remote sensing observation data of eastern China in March 2021, the periodic characteristics and driving factors of aerosol environment in Beijing and Xuzhou, China, the upstream and downstream cities along the transport pathway of dust, are studied in this work. The results show that: (1) The two consecutive large-scale dust storms were driven by cold air from Mongolia to eastern China. The first dust entered the Yellow Sea in the middle part of Jiangsu province, and the second dust recirculation occurred near Jiangsu Province under the influence of southwest warm wind, resulting in continuous pollution. (2) The sand dust was mainly coarse particles, which made the PM10 concentration in the near surface layer rise sharply to 20 times of the background value and PM2:5 to 3 times. Xuzhou in the downstream was 500 µg·m−3 lower than Beijing in the upstream, and the time was delayed by 12 hours. (3) The background aerosol in Xuzhou was mainly scattered fine particles, the aerosol optical thickness (AOD ) was less than 0.5, and the single scattering albedo (SSA) was about 0.99. When the sand storm arrived in Xuzhou, it floated in the upper layer of 2∼4 km and mixed with the aerosol underlying layer with the action of gravity, so that AOD instantly increased to more than 1.5. After 24 hours, it began to gradually transition from sand dust dominated to local pollutant particles dominated (the aerosol depolarization ratio decreased from more than 0.25 to less than 0.1). It is also found that some particles in the dust had strong absorption to 440 nm spectrum, which was related to the source of dust.

Key words: dust transportation, aerosol, PM10, lidar, single scatter albedo