In early August, lanzhou University's second comprehensive research team on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau has successfully completed the 2019 field observation and experiment on dust aerosols and their Climatic and environmental effects, and its members have returned to Lanzhou. Officially launched on June 23, the team spent more than 40 days on a scientific expedition in Tibet's Ali region and the Taklimakan Desert in Xinjiang.

With an average altitude of 4,300 meters, Ali region in Tibet is known as the "roof of the world". With high cold, low oxygen and high ultraviolet radiation, this region has a harsh living environment and is considered "the most inhospitable region for human habitation in China".

The Taklamakan Desert is located on the north side of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau and is the second largest desert in the world. More than 80% of the area is mobile dune, local strong wind events, resulting in frequent sandstorm activity, a third of the year is sandstorm days. The strong wind-sand activity in this area has a potential influence on the aerosol content over the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

While adapting to their own strong altitude sickness, the expedition team members in The Ali region should ensure the normal and stable operation of all kinds of instruments to overcome local strong gusts and other harsh conditions. The expedition team members in the Taklamakan Desert overcame such problems as high temperatures and inconvenient accommodation and transportation, and made two trips through the Taklamakan Desert to conduct observation and investigation. All the team members overcame many difficulties to obtain a variety of first - hand comprehensive observation data and achieved complete success.

Use the research and the taklamakan desert in ali region comprehensive observation data, can clarify the qinghai-tibet plateau north slope of the physical and chemical properties of dust aerosols, dust aerosol in the highlands to the concentrations of atmospheric particulates, quantitative local and nonlocal sources (mainly) the taklimakan desert dust conveying contribution of the dust content on the plateau, understanding the taklamakan desert saline and microbial effects on carbon flux in the quicksand, biological climate effect of aerosol. The analysis of the data will make breakthroughs in improving the model parameters, improving the calculation accuracy of the direct and indirect radiation forcing of atmospheric dust aerosols on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and improving the influence of dust aerosols on the energy budget of the plateau geogas system.

Scientific research work of periodic task is completed, showed high levels of lanzhou university experimental major national strategic services, teachers and students of science and technology for the construction of "double top" unity struggle, self-motivated, forward spirit, embodies the scientific research workers for the second time the qinghai-tibet scientific advance, the steadfast work, scaling new heights of strong determination. The strong support and enthusiastic help from multiple departments and units will greatly encourage the team members to complete their tasks with high quality and jointly realize the grand goal of protecting the last pure land in the world and protecting and building the beautiful Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.The second comprehensive scientific expedition on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau will last for five years starting from 2019. Lanzhou university is the second one of the important units of the Tibetan research, led by professor jian-ping huang took "dust aerosols and its climate effect" of the work itself, and established the lanzhou university "the qinghai-tibet plateau north of dust aerosol transmission comprehensive research unit" and "one hierarchical characteristics of the surface of ice and snow dust research team", aims to five compounds several key areas of qinghai-tibet plateau surface of ice and snow dusts, atmospheric dust aerosol comprehensive scientific investigation, discusses the space-time evolution of the qinghai-tibet plateau dust activity history, controlling factors, physical and chemical characteristics, the radiation force and its response to the frontier science problems such as climate, The scientific and quantitative results of dust aerosol characteristics and its climatic and environmental effects on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are of great theoretical significance and application value for the response to climate change and environmental protection on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.

Team members take a group photo at the Ali station in Xizang Province

At 6 a.m., the team deployed the tethered sounding system at the Alico station

Professor Huang Jianping launches sounding balloons