© Author(s) 2009. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Trans-pacific dust transport: integrated analysis of

Abstract. Detailed 3-D structures of Trans-Pacific Asian dust transport occurring during 5–15 May 2007 were in-vestigated using the NASA/CALIOP vertical-resolved mea-surements and a three-dimensional aerosol model (SPRINT-ARS). Both CALIOP and SPRINTARS dust extinctions showed a good agreement along the way of the transport from the dust source regions across North Pacific into North America. A vertically two-layered dust distribution was ob-served over the northeastern Pacific and North America. The lower dust layer originated from a dust storm generated in the Gobi Desert on 5 May. It was transported at an altitude of around 4 km MSL and has mixed with Asian anthropogenic air pollutants during the course of transport. The upper dust layer mainly originated from a dust storm that occurred in the Taklimakan Desert 2–3 days after the Gobi dust storm gen