Test of Dust Emission Over the Middle East

Mokhammad Suleiman Mostamandi,Illia Shevchenko,Anatolii Anisimov,Johann Engelbrecht,Georgiy Stenchikov,Yasser Alshehri,Alexander Ukhov

doi:10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-1893

Mokhammad Suleiman Mostamandi, Illia Shevchenko + Show 5 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-1893

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Abstract

&lt;p&gt;Abstract&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The dust emission simulated within the up-to-date global and regional models differs by almost an order of magnitude. The models are tuned to reproduce the observed aerosol optical depth (AOD) that, with some caveats, reflects the dust mass retained in the atmosphere. However, the amount of dust suspended in the atmosphere is controlled independently by the dust emission and deposition; therefore, only AOD observations are insufficient to constrain both these processes. To calculate the dust emission over the Middle East (ME), in this study, we employ dust deposition observations, AERONET AOD, micro-pulse lidar, and satellite observations to constrain the WRF-Chem simulations. The dust deposition is measured on a monthly bases for 2015-2019 using passive samplers over six sites over land and the sea. We compare the WRF-Chem simulations, conducted with 10-km grid spacing, with the recent MERRA-2 and CAMS reanalysis. WRF-Chem is configured with the GOCART dust scheme. We calculate the meteorological and aerosol initial and boundary conditions using the MERRA-2 reanalysis.&amp;#160;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;We evaluated the dust regional mass balance controlled by emission, deposition, and cross-boundary transport. The smallest dust particles are transported at vast distances while the heaviest ones deposit inside of the domain. Since the model accounts for dust particles with radii&lt;10 um, we process the deposition samples to extract the weight of particles smaller than 10 um. WRF-Chem was tuned to reproduce the observed AOD and monthly deposition of dust particles with radii &lt; 10 um. We found that the ME dust emission comprises about 30% of the global annual dust emission. MERRA-2 underestimates the ME dust emission by about 15%.&lt;/p&gt;

Highlights

The models are tuned to reproduce the observed aerosol optical depth (AOD) that, with some caveats, reflects the dust mass retained in the atmosphere
The amount of dust suspended in the atmosphere is controlled independently by the dust emission and deposition; only AOD observations are insufficient to constrain both these processes
The dust deposition is measured on a monthly bases for 2015-2019 using passive samplers over six sites over land and the sea

Summary

Introduction

Test of Dust Emission Over the Middle East Mokhammad Suleiman Mostamandi1, Georgiy Stenchikov1, Alexander Ukhov1, Illia Shevchenko1, 1,3 Johann Engelbrecht , Yasser Alshehri , and Anatolii Anisimov KAUST, Earth Science and Engineering, Thuwal - Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (suleiman.mostamandy@gmail.com)

Results

Conclusion