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A lidar network captured the evolution of a dust layer in the Gobi Desert on 22–23 May 2013. The lidar network consists of a ceilometer and two AD-Net lidars in Mongolia. The dust layer was generated by a strong wind due to a cold front and elevated over the surface of the cold front by an updraft of the warm air in the cold-front system. It was evolving from the atmospheric boundary layer to the free troposphere while moving 600 km through the desert with the cold front.

This study shows the results of field experiments of soil particles saltation and laboratory experiments of imaging of the surface structure of dust particles. In the Gobi area, dust occurs when the wind speed at ground level exceeds 7 m/s. It has been reported that bacteria are attached to dust, but the details of its attachment are unknown. It is also expected that these bacteria will fly at the time of occurrence of dust, and fundamental research is important to clarify the relationship between dust components and bacteria.

A large-scale dust event occurred in East Asia during early May 2017, and transported dust was measured all over Japan. We performed an analysis of the entire dust event using multiple sources: a local ceilometer measurement, measurements from an optical particle counter in the Gobi Desert (Dalanzadgad, Mongolia), a study of Dust RGB imagery obtained from Himawari-8, lidar measurements from Japan, and meteorological data. Our results show that three extratropical low pressure systems occurred consecutively in Mongolia and generated dust storms in the Gobi Desert. Remarkably, the Dust RGB imagery shows both the occurrence and the transportation of the dust, and was able to detect two dust outbreaks in the Horqin Sandy Land of Northern China and their transportation to eastern Japan; this shows that the Horqin Sandy Land was one of the source regions of this dust event.