Declining trend of dust aerosols over central China observed with polarization lidar during 2010-2020

East Asian desert is one of the most important dust sources that contribute approximately ~40% of the global annual dust emissions and ~88% of the dust over mainland China and adjacent seas, significantly impacting the regional environment and climate. In the past decade, the frequency of dust storm outbreaks has largely declined in the sources of Asian dust due to the improvement of natural conditions (i.e., weakened surface wind speed, enhanced precipitation, and soil water) and the promotion of vegetation cover caused by afforestation in North China. However, it is still rarely reported how the dust properties after long-range transport in the downstream regions respond to this downtrend. During 2010-2020, we have been conducting routine monitoring of height-resolved dust aerosols with a ground-based polarization lidar in Wuhan (30.5°N, 114.4°E), a mega city in central China. The dust optical depths (DOD) have decreased by 0.011 per year, accounting for ~22% of the decrease rate for local aerosol optical depths (AOD). The dust mass concentration and columnar mass density also have declined by 2.03 μg·m^-3 and 1.97 mg·m^-2 per year, respectively. During spring and winter, a mass of long-range transported dust plumes intrude into Wuhan, with seasonal mean DOD of 0.21 and 0.15, respectively. Dust aerosols in winter are generally located at lower altitudes than in spring, concentrating mainly below 1.0 km. Wintertime dust shows a slightly smaller particle depolarization ratio than spring (0.11 versus 0.14), indicating a weakened nonspherical shape caused by high-level moisture/polluted conditions during winter. The surface PM₁₀ concentration presents a downtrend with a rate of -8.0 μg·m^-3·yr^-1. This study provides the climatology of dust properties over central China, supplementing our understanding of the feedback in the downstream regions to the reduction of dust emissions in the East Asia desert.