Investigation of climate change effects on Iraq dust activity using LSTM

Abstract

Awareness about the impact of climate change on the change rate of dust phenomenon has become a crucial problem due to public health, climate, and air quality. It has been recognized that the Tigris- Euphrates alluvial plain is the main source of dust storms in the Middle East and southwest Asia. In this work, the effects of different variables, including minimum temperature (Tmin), maximum temperature (Tmax), precipitation (Pr), mean wind speed (MWS), humidity (H), and vegetation (Veg) on dust activity are investigated, and Aerosol optical depth (AOD) was predicted by Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) from 2021 to 2040. HadGEM3-GC was selected to generate the climatic patterns under Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP2-4.5 and SSP5-8.5) scenarios until 2040. The Long Ashton Research Station Weather Generator (LARS-WG 6) software was used to downscale the General Circulation model (GCM). Moreover, Mann-Kendall and Sen's slope tests are utilized to assess a significant trend. Tmax, Tmin, Pr, and Veg were determined to predict AOD that had a highly close relationship with AOD (r = 0.865, R2 = 0.752, RMSE = 0.079, and MAE = 0.065). The results indicated that AOD would rise gradually in two upcoming decades with 10.5% and 15.2% related to base period (2000–2020) under two scenarios. Understanding of dust phenomenon of future prospective could help policymakers to provide a better situation of air quality.