A simulation of Asian dust events in March 2010 by using the ADAM2 model

Abstract

Asian dust events occurred in Asia during March 2010 were simulated using the Asian Dust Aerosol Model 2 (ADAM2). The performance of the model for simulations of surface dust concentrations and dust event occurrences was tested at several monitoring sites located in the dust source region and the downstream region of Korea. The observed and modeled dust event occurrences at each monitoring site were defined with the hourly observed and modeled dust concentrations that were used to evaluate the performance of the model by constructing a contingency table for the dust event occurrence. It was found that the model simulated quite well the starting and ending times of dust events with their peak dust concentrations for most dust events occurred both in the dust source region and the downstream region of Korea. However, the model failed to simulate a few dust events observed in both regions mainly due to the inaccurate simulations of the meteorological fields. Inaccurate simulations of wind speeds have caused for the model to simulate dust events poorly in the dust source region whereas poor simulations of precipitation of the fifth-generation mesoscale model (MM5) model have led to miss dust events in the downstream region of Korea. The contingency table made with the hourly data for the dust event occurrence made it possible to evaluate the ADAM2 model for the simulation of the dust event occurrence. It was found that the model has the probabilistic simulation capability for dust events of about 78% with the hit rate of more than 83% and the false alarm rate of about 27% for the dust events occurred during March in 2010. The probabilistic capability of the model could be much improved by improving the meteorological model (MM5 model).