## 1 Introduction  
The atmospheric mixing layer (ML) is a type of atmospheric boundary layer (ABL) where exchange processes between the atmosphere and surface occur through turbulent mixing [1]. Its height, known as the mixing layer height (MLH), can indicate the diffusion and dilution ability of atmospheric aerosol in the vertical direction and quantify the degree of turbulent mixing development [2]. The long-term continuous observation of the MLH is of great significance to the local air pollution forecasting and the formulation of air pollution policies.  
The variation in MLH is significantly affected by the local weather system and meteorological conditions [3]. Dust weather is mainly distributed along the southern edge and hinterland of the Taklimakan Desert (TD) [4]. The study site of this paper is Mining County, which is situated at the southern edge of the TD and the foot of the Kunlun Mountains. It is of great significance to study the ML at this site. On the one hand, the convergence of the east-west airflows at the study site leads to frequent wind-sand events [5; 6],and the health of local people is deeply impacted by dust weather [7]. According to statistics, the average annual dust days in MinFeng has reached 113.5 days [8], making it the place with the most frequent occurrence of dust weather in China. On the other hand, there is a widespread dust aerosol layer at a height of 3 km [9], the deep ML of higher than 3 km occurred frequently [10], and the number of days with an MLH exceeding 4 km is more than that of other meteorological stations in the TD during the summer [11]. It is significant that the dust aerosols here can rise into the free troposphere above 7 km, driven by the northern slope of the Tibetan Plateau (TP) [12; 13], and can affect the climate of the TP and even the whole globe [14; 15]. However, the MinFeng station was built in 2018 [16], and the previous studies on the ML in this region were relatively few, mostly focusing on summer and case studies [17; 18]. There are few long-term high spatial and temporal resolution observations to reveal the variation characteristics of the local ML from monthly, seasonal, and annual perspectives.  
At present, the MLH cannot be measured directly by instruments, and its estimation relies on the analysis of vertical profiles of the temperature, turbulence, or atmospheric composition [3]. The coherent Doppler wind lidar (CDWL) has the characteristics of high spatial and temporal resolution, a short blind area, and high detection height [19; 20; 21; 22], which confirms the reliability of its estimation of MLH in various application scenarios [23; 24; 25; 17].  
In view of this, the CDWL was used to conduct a long-term stable observation experiment spanning up to 2 years in the MinFeng County, located in the TD, and the MLH was calculated. The relationship and variation between the MLH and the surface meteorological elements (SMEs) were statistically analyzed. This paper is organized as follows: the study site, data, and methods are described in Section 2. The variation in MLH and SMEs with time are analyzed in Section 3. The relationship between MLH and SMEs is analyzed in Section 4. Finally, a conclusion is drawn in Section 5.