Redefining the northern reach of Australia's dust transport system

• Main Authors: McGowan, H., Marx, S., Clark, A.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2009
• Subjects: Southern Ocean; Austral; Indian; Heron Island
• Online Access: https://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:243468

Present day dust transport from Australia has typically been considered to follow one of two principal pathways, either through the well studied southeast dust transport corridor into the Tasman Sea and Southern Ocean or through the lesser studied northwest dust transport corridor into the Indian Ocean and Timor Sea. Using the HYbrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory model (HYSPLIT_4) we computed seasonal climatologies (1980–2000) of potential dust transport air parcel trajectories from Australia’s most active dust source region, the Lake Eyre Basin. Notably, during the austral winter, trajectories were found to cover the coral reefs of northern Australia including the Great Barrier Reef and to extend north to the tropical rainforests of Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, and to the southern Philippines. In this paper we review the significance of dust transport north from Australia and present observational evidence of dust transport to the Great Barrier Reef and Papua New Guinea. Results from the geochemical analysis of dust collected from Heron Island in the southern Great Barrier Reef are presented. These suggest a provenance to the Murray-Darling Basin of southeastern Australia. As a result, dust from the Lake Eyre and Murray-Darling Basins may be an important factor in marine and terrestrial ecosystems, and affect air quality and climate under favourable conditions over a vast area covering much of northern Australia and neighbouring northern oceans and landmasses.