The Dust Club
Welcome to the home page of the Dust Club! We are a small,
informal group of people from around Beijing who are interested in Chinese dust
storms and come together from time to time, just like a club, to discuss the
current state of the field. We have our own E-mail discussion list,
Dustclub@kenrahn.com, that is open to
anyone who is interested. (To be added to the list, just write to kenrahn@kenrahn.com
and ask.) The list currently has about 60 subscribers, nearly all from China. We
have an FTP site with articles about dust storms (ftp://karws.gso.uri.edu), set
up for anonymous log-in with your E-mail address as password. It currently
contains about 60 articles, mostly in pdf format. We have had our first meeting,
an informal workshop, in Beijing during 4–5 April
2005. (See report below.)
The Dust Club is the joint idea of Kenneth A. (Ken) Rahn and
Gao Qingxian. We are both very interested in understanding Chinese dust storms,
and have discussed the subject frequently. Gao even took me on a trip to Inner
Mongolia in the spring of 2004 to view firsthand the old and new deserts there.
(A photo record of this trip is
available.) When the last part of my February–April trip to China in spring
2005 got postponed, I suggested to Gao that we use some of the extra time to get
together for an intensive discussion of dust storms,
something we had never had time to do. That idea quickly grew into inviting a
few friends to join us. Gao christened us the "Dust Club" because it would be
much more informal than a traditional scientific meeting. He and I compiled a list of
interested researchers around Beijing. I set up an E-mail discussion list and notified them
that way.
With the success of our first meeting, we consider ourselves
an established organization. Exactly what the future holds, however, none of us
knows.
Goals of the Dust Club
(1) Bring like-minded scientists together for regular
discussions.
(2) Provide a friendly, relaxed environment for friends to
meet.
(3) Promote free and open exchange of ideas and information
on dust storms.
(4) Promote dust-storm research.
(5) Stimulate collaborative research.
The first meeting, 4–5 April 2005 in Beijing
News
The Third International Workshop on Sandstorms and Associated
Dust-fall will be held in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, during 25–27 August 2005. It
will be sponsored by the China Meteorological Society, the Inner Mongolia
Autonomous Region Association for Science and Technology, the Inner Mongolia
Meteorological Society, the Geography College of Inner Mongolia Normal
University, the Korea-China Center for Atmospheric Research, and the China-Korea
Center for Atmospheric Research (Peking University). The deadline for submitting
abstracts and the registration form is 30 June 2005. There are preliminary plans
for an expedition to a source region for dust storms after the workshop. The
full announcement can be read
here.
(13 June 2005) The Second Announcement of the workshop in
Hohhot is now available. I have posted the
English and Chinese
versions. Both are in MS Word format. The deadline for submitting abstracts is
30 June 2005.
Problem with E-mail list
The server for the E-mail list recently disabled the
addresses of several members because of excessive "bounces," which means
repeated inability to establish contact. I reinstated them on 17 May 2005, but
the problem remained. It appears that messages from the Dust Club list are not
reaching subscribers with addresses at 126.com, 163.net, 163.com, sohu.com, and
sohu.com.cn. I suspect that something at these servers is falsely rejecting our
messages as spam. I therefore ask anyone with these addresses to provide me with
different addresses as soon as possible. It appears that you haven't been
getting the Dust Club messages for a long time! I have listed the specific
addresses here.
Newsgroup
As an additional resource for us, I have just set
up a newsgroup that will be served by my new computer. You can post messages
there and read them, just like on any Usenet newsgroup. This is an experiment,
because I know that many Chinese people don't read newsgroups much.
I strongly recommend that interested people follow this
procedure: (1) Install Outlook Express if you haven't already. (2) Click
Tools/Accounts. (3) Click News/Add/News. (4) Fill your name and E-mail address.
(5) When the third screen asks you for an NNTP server, enter karws.gso.uri.edu,
then close the box. That name will then appear under "Folders" on the main
screen. (6) Right-click on it, and choose "Newsgroups." You should see a list of
several. (7) Click on Dustclub, and choose subscribe. You should now be able to
read and post messages with ease.
Good luck!