Gobi Desert

The Gobi Desert (Говь, , ˈɡoʊbi; ) is a large, cold desert and grassland region in northern China and southern Mongolia and is the sixth largest desert in the world. The name of the desert comes from the Mongolian word Gobi, used to refer to all of the waterless regions in the Mongolian Plateau, while in Chinese Gobi is used to refer to rocky, semi-deserts such as the Gobi itself rather than sandy deserts. The Gobi measures from southwest to northeast and from north to south. The desert is widest in the west, along the line joining the Lake Bosten and the Lop Nor (87°–89° east). In 2007, it occupied an arc of land in area. In its broadest definition, the Gobi includes the long stretch of desert extending from the foot of the Pamirs (77° east) to the Greater Khingan Mountains, 116–118° east, on the border of Manchuria; and from the foothills of the Altay, Sayan, and Yablonoi mountain ranges on the north to the Kunlun, Altyn-Tagh, and Qilian mountain ranges, which form the northern edges of the Tibetan Plateau, on the south. A relatively large area on the east side of the Greater Khingan range, between the upper waters of the Songhua (Sungari) and the upper waters of the Liao-ho, is reckoned to belong to the Gobi by conventional usage. Some geographers and ecologists prefer to regard the western area of the Gobi region (as defined above): the basin of the Tarim in Xinjiang and the desert basin of Lop Nor and Hami (Kumul), as forming a separate and independent desert, called the Taklamakan Desert. Much of the Gobi is not sandy, instead resembling exposed bare rock. The Gobi is overall a cold desert, with frost and occasionally snow occurring on its dunes. Besides being quite far north, it is also located on a plateau roughly above sea level, which contributes to its low temperatures. An average of about of rain falls annually in the Gobi. Additional moisture reaches parts of the Gobi in winter as snow is blown by the wind from the Siberian Steppes. These winds may cause the Gobi to reach in winter to in summer.

Unraveling the Uptake of Glyoxal on a Diversity of Natural Dusts and Surrogates: Linking Dust Composition to Glyoxal Uptake and Estimation of Atmospheric Lifetimes

Michel Rossi, Hui Chen

The uptake of glyoxal (Gly) on 28 different samples with varying mineralogical origins, such as clays, mineral proxies, and natural dusts from the major arid regions of the Earth, was determined. Experiments were performed at ambient temperature inside a K ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

Calibration of ground surface albedo models

Christophe Ballif, Pierre-Jean Alet, Arttu Matias Tuomiranta

The emergence of bifacial photovoltaics as a serious option for large-scale power generation makes the accuracy of the in-situ estimation of ground surface albedo increasingly critical. Recent studies have evaluated the performance of different models but ...

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD2022

Unraveling the Uptake of Glyoxal on a Diversity of Natural Dusts and Surrogates: Linking Dust Composition to Glyoxal Uptake and Estimation of Atmospheric Lifetimes

Vegetation Drastically Reduces Wind Erosion: An Implementation of the RWEQ in the Mongolian Gobi Steppe

Calibration of ground surface albedo models