Stoitchko Kalenderski

High‐resolution regional modeling of summertime transport and impact of African dust over the Red Sea and Arabian Peninsula

Severe dust outbreaks and high dust loading over Eastern Africa and the Red Sea are frequently detected in the summer season. Observations suggest that small-scale dynamic and orographic effects, from both the Arabian and African sides, strongly contribute to dust plume formation. To better understand these processes, we present here the first high-resolution modeling study of a dust outbreak in June 2012 developed over East Africa, the Red Sea, and the Arabian Peninsula. Using the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) component, we identified several dust generating dynamical processes that range from convective to synoptic scales, including synoptic cyclones, nocturnal low-level jets, and cold pools of mesoscale convective systems. The simulations reveal an eastward transport of African dust across the Red Sea. Over the northern part of the Red Sea, most of the dust transport occurs above 2 km height, whereas across the central and southern parts of the sea; dust is mostly transported below 2 km height. Dust is the dominant contributor (87%) to the aerosol optical depth, producing a domain average cooling effect of −12.1 W m−2 at the surface, a warming of 7.1 W m−2 in the atmosphere, and a residual cooling of −4.9 W m−2 at the top of the atmosphere. Both dry and wet deposition processes contribute significantly to dust removal from the atmosphere. Model results compare well with available ground-based and satellite observations but generally underestimate the observed maximum values of aerosol optical depth. The satellite-retrieved mean optical depth at some locations is underestimated by a factor of 2. A sensitive experiment suggests that these large local differences may result from poor characterization of dust emissions in some areas of the modeled domain. In this case study we successfully simulate the major fine-scale dust generating dynamical processes, explicitly resolving convection and haboob formation. The future development of this novel approach will be beneficial for dust research, assuming steady growth of available computational power.

Dust plume formation in the free troposphere and aerosol size distribution during the Saharan Mineral Dust Experiment in North Africa

Dust particles mixed in the free troposphere have longer lifetimes than airborne particles near the surface. Their cumulative radiative impact on earths meteorological processes and climate might be significant despite their relatively small contribution to total dust abundance. One example is the elevated dust-laden Saharan Air Layer (SAL) over the tropical and subtropical North Atlantic, which cools the sea surface. To understand the formation mechanisms of a dust layer in the free troposphere, this study combines model simulations and dust observations collected during the first stage of the Saharan Mineral Dust Experiment (SAMUM-I), which sampled dust events that extended from Morocco to Portugal, and investigated the spatial distribution and the microphysical, optical, chemical, and radiative properties of Saharan mineral dust. The Weather Research Forecast model coupled with the Chemistry/Aerosol module (WRF-Chem) is employed to reproduce the meteorological environment and spatial and size distributions of dust. The model domain covers northwest Africa and adjacent water with 5 km horizontal grid spacing and 51 vertical layers. The experiments were run from 20 May to 9 June 2006, covering the period of the most intensive dust outbreaks. Comparisons of model results with available airborne and ground-based observations show that WRF-Chem reproduces observed meteorological fields as well as aerosol distribution across the entire region and along the airplanes tracks. Several mechanisms that cause aerosol entrainment into the free troposphere are evaluated and it is found that orographic lifting, and interaction of sea breeze with the continental outflow are key mechanisms that form a surface-detached aerosol plume over the ocean. The model dust emission scheme is tuned to simultaneously fit the observed total optical depth and the ratio of aerosol optical depths generated by fine and coarse dust modes. Comparisons of simulated dust size distributions with airplane and ground-based observations are good for optically important 0.4–0.7 µm particles, but suggest that more detailed treatment of microphysics in the model is required to capture the full-scale effect of large and very small aerosol particles beyond the above range.

Quantifying the impacts of landscape heterogeneity and model resolution on dust emissions in the Arabian Peninsula

This study evaluates the spatiotemporal variability of dust emission in the Arabian Peninsula and quantifies the emission sensitivity to the land-cover heterogeneity by using the Community Land Model version 4 (CLM43) at three different spatial resolutions. The land-cover heterogeneity is represented by the CLM4-default plant function types (PFTs) and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) land cover types, respectively, at different grids. We area-average surface vegetation data and use the default nearest neighbor method to interpolate meteorological variables. We find that using MODIS data leads to a slightly higher coverage of vegetated land than the default PFT data; the former also gives more dust emission than the latter at 25- and 50-km grids as the default PFT data have more gridcells favoring less dust emission. The research highlights the importance of using proper data-processing methods or dust emission thresholds to preserve the dust emission accuracy in land models. CLM4 can capture the spatiotemporal dust emission features on the Arabian Peninsula.MODIS has slightly higher vegetated coverage and more emission than that of CLM-PFT.The MODIS-based dust emission increases with model resolution.Resolution-dependence is due to the heterogeneity of factors influencing emissions.