Middle East desert aerosol size distribution measurements and modeling in urban, coastal, and continental regions

Abstract

Various experiments have been carried out recently in Middle East desert regions for prediction of aerosol particle concentration and size distribution. The differences between urban and non-urban desert coastal environments, and urban and non-urban desert continental environments, are of interest. During these experiments aerosol particle concentrations for similar weather but different environmental conditions were measured and analyzed. The well-known MODTRAN urban, desert, maritime, and continental aerosol models were tested for aerosol particle distribution prediction. Unfortunately, many of those models did not predict correctly the aerosol distributions in different types of arid environments. Comparison of results leads to the following interesting conclusions: the aerosol distribution for each of our environments, such as urban-coastal-desert, non-urban-coastal-desert, urban-continental-desert, and non-urban-continental-desert, can be predicted by multiplying the Mediterranean coastal aerosol model parameters with semi-empirical correction functions or factors. The functions are different for coastal and continental environments, and for urban and non-urban environments. The models proposed in this work better describe effects of different atmospheric conditions for Middle East desert aerosol modeling.