Kumtag Desert (Turpan)

Kumtag (库 木 塔格 沙漠)
Dunes in the Kumtag Desert (Turpan).
location	Turpan , Xinjiang People's Republic of China
in the	Turpan Hami Basin (Eastern Tian Shan )
Coordinates	42 ° 40 ′  N , 90 ° 15 ′  E Coordinates: 42 ° 40 ′  N , 90 ° 15 ′  E
rock	sand dunes
surface	2,500 km²
particularities	extreme surface temperatures
The Kumtag Desert, also called Turpan Kumtag, in the city of Shanshan. Here the dune field on the outskirts of the city, developed as a park for tourists.

The Kumtag Desert ( Chinese  库 木 塔格 沙漠 , Pinyin Kù mǔ tǎ gé shāmò ) in the Turpan District in the Chinese province of Xinjiang is a dune field in the Turpan-Hami Depression between the eastern foothills of the Tian-Shan Mountains. The 2500 km², vegetation-free sandy desert is one of the landscapes with the highest surface temperatures on earth.

geography

Turpan Depression and Bogda Shan Mountains (satellite image from 2004). The Turpan Kumtag is the extensive yellow and red-brown, wavy area in the lower right corner of the image. To the left is the Turpan Basin, to the right is the Hami Basin. The upper half of the picture shows the Bogda Shan Mountains (up to 5570 m high). The flaming mountains made of sandstone with their characteristic color stripes run through the center of the picture from left to right and border the Turpan Kumtag. The green patches around the Flaming Mountains are the oases of the Turpan Depression. In the green area adjacent to the Turpan Kumtag above is the city of Shanshan. The blue spot at the bottom of the picture is Lake Aydingkol , which was probably filled with water at the time of the picture.

The Kumtag Desert in Turpan District , Xinjiang Province in northwest China is a sand desert . The Uighur term "kumtag" or "kum tagh" literally means "sand mountain". It is a coherent dune field covering around 2500 km² in the middle of a deep intermontane depression between the foothills of the eastern Tianshan . In the north it borders directly on the oasis city of Shanshan as well as on the Flaming Mountains and Salt Mountains. The dunes rise up to 600  m above sea level and thus separate the Turpan Basin in the west, which drops to 154 m below sea level , from the Hami Basin in the east, which reaches 150  m above sea level at its deepest point . In the south, the Kumtag is bounded by the Chöl Tagh mountain range.

climate

The Kumtag Desert has a temperate, arid desert climate, which means that it is dry, hot and windy. The mean annual precipitation for rain is between 20 and 50 mm with an average of 19 rainy days, mainly from June to August. The potential evaporation reaches 200 times the amount of precipitation .

Strong westerly winds have blown the sand into the Kumtag over time. The highest measured wind speeds in the region are more than 40  m / s (1978).

The ground surface temperatures are among the highest on earth. There is no wind between the dunes, and where the sand is a little darker in color, temperatures reach record highs. In the 1970s, one was soil temperature of 82.3  ° C noted. A surface temperature of 66.8 ° C was found in the sand of the Kumtag during a large-scale temperature determination by satellite in 2008.

Kumtag desert park

Due to the proximity to the city of Shanshan and the associated good accessibility, the desert landscape became one of the most important tourist attractions in Turpan. It ranks second among the 17 landscapes considered important for tourism by the Turpan Marketing Company. An area of ​​1880 km² was declared a national park. In the vicinity of the city, the Kumtag Desert Park ( Chinese  库 木 塔格 沙漠 公园 , Pinyin kù mù tǎ gé shāmò gōngyuán ) and the Kumtag desert landscape ( Chinese  库姆塔格 沙漠 景区 , Pinyin Kù mǔ tǎ gé shāmò jǐngqū ) through paths and Facilities developed for tourism.

Surname

The Kumtag Desert in Turpan is one of two sand deserts of the same name in Xinjiang Province, which leads to confusion. The namesake ( Kumtag Desert (Dunhuang) ) is located east of Lop Nor and extends to the city of Dunhuang in Gansu Province.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Reiss, D., J. Raack, AP Rossi, G. Di Achille, and H. Hiesinger (2010), First in-situ analysis of dust devil tracks on Earth and their comparison with tracks on Mars, Geophys. Res. Lett., 37, L14203, doi : 10.1029 / 2010GL044016 . ( PDF )
2. ↑ ^{a b} Chen, Lu, et al. "Groundwater hydrochemistry and isotope geochemistry in the Turpan Basin, northwestern China." Journal of Arid Land 6.4 (2014): 378-388. ( PDF )
3. ↑ Li, X., Jiang, F., Li, L. and Wang, G. (2011), Spatial and temporal variability of precipitation concentration index, concentration degree and concentration period in Xinjiang, China. Int. J. Climatol., 31: 1679-1693. ( HTML )
4. ↑ Lybrand, Rebecca A., et al. "Nitrate, perchlorate, and iodate co-occur in coastal and inland deserts on Earth." Chemical Geology 442 (2016): 174-186. ( PDF )
5. ↑ ^{a b} Walker, AS (1981, March). Drainage in Gobi Terrain: a Mars Analog. In Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (Vol. 12, pp. 1127-1129). ( bibcode : 1981LPI .... 12.1127W )
6. ↑ Mildrexler, David J., Maosheng Zhao, and Steven W. Running. "Satellite finds highest land skin temperatures on earth." Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 92.7 (2011): 855-860. ( PDF )
7. ↑ Li, Yong, and Hao Jie Sun. "Research on Tourism United Marketing in Turpan Area, Xinjiang, China." Advanced Materials Research. Vol. 267. Trans Tech Publications, 2011. ( PDF )