Dust Storm and Its Causes in Northern China

Dust storm in arid and semi-arid areas of Asia is an important problem because it affects people´s living conditions deeply in many countries during every spring. In this case study, the trend and characteristics of dust storm occurrence from 1960 to 2001 in northern China, as well as the connection between dust storm occurrence and some causes such as common land surface properties and human activities are statistical analyzed using meteorological data and remote sensing data. Results indicate that dust storm occurrence has a descending trend during 42 years, but we found that NDVI in winter has opposite trend to dust storm occurrence during 1981-2000 only.