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Atmospheric Dust Modeling from Meso to Global Scales with the Online NMMB/BSC-Dust Model Part 2: Experimental Campaigns in Northern AfricaThe new NMMB/BSC-Dust model is intended to provide short to medium-range weather and dust forecasts from regional to global scales. It is an online model in which the dust aerosol dynamics and physics are solved at each model time step. The companion paper (Perez et al., 2011) develops the dust model parameterizations and provides daily to annual evaluations of the model for its global and regional configurations. Modeled aerosol optical depth (AOD) was evaluated against AERONET Sun photometers over Northern Africa, Middle East and Europe with correlations around 0.6-0.7 on average without dust data assimilation. In this paper we analyze in detail the behavior of the model using data from the Saharan Mineral dUst experiment (SAMUM-1) in 2006 and the Bodele Dust Experiment (BoDEx) in 2005. AOD from satellites and Sun photometers, vertically resolved extinction coefficients from lidars and particle size distributions at the ground and in the troposphere are used, complemented by wind profile data and surface meteorological measurements. All simulations were performed at the regional scale for the Northern African domain at the expected operational horizontal resolution of 25 km. Model results for SAMUM-1 generally show good agreement with satellite data over the most active Saharan dust sources. The model reproduces the AOD from Sun photometers close to sources and after long-range transport, and the dust size spectra at different height levels. At this resolution, the model is not able to reproduce a large haboob that occurred during the campaign. Some deficiencies are found concerning the vertical dust distribution related to the representation of the mixing height in the atmospheric part of the model. For the BoDEx episode, we found the diurnal temperature cycle to be strongly dependant on the soil moisture, which is underestimated in the NCEP analysis used for model initialization. The low level jet (LLJ) and the dust AOD over the Bodélé are well reproduced. The remaining negative AOD bias (due to underestimated surface wind speeds) can be substantially reduced by decreasing the threshold friction velocity in the model.
Document ID
20140011359
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Haustein, K.
(Oxford Univ. Oxford, United Kingdom)
Perez, C.
(Columbia Univ. New York, NY, United States)
Baldasano, J. M.
(Technical Univ. Catalonia, Spain)
Jorba, O.
(Barcelona Supercomputing Center Barcelona, Spain)
Basart, S.
(Barcelona Supercomputing Center Barcelona, Spain)
Miller, R. L.
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Janjic, Z.
(National Centers for Environmental Prediction Silver Spring, MD, United States)
Black, T.
(National Centers for Environmental Prediction Silver Spring, MD, United States)
Nickovic, S.
(World Meteorological Organization Geneva, Switzerland)
Todd, M. C.
(Sussex Univ. Brighton, United Kingdom)
Washington, R.
(Oxford Univ. Oxford, United Kingdom)
Muller, D.
(Gwangju Inst. of Science and Technology South Korea)
Tesche, M.
(Stockholm Univ. Sweden)
Weinzierl, B.
(Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany)
Esselborn, M.
(Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany)
Schladitz, A.
(Institute for Tropospheric Research Leipzig, Germany)
Date Acquired
September 3, 2014
Publication Date
March 23, 2012
Publication Information
Publication: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics
Publisher: Copernicus Publications
Volume: 12
Subject Category
Meteorology And Climatology
Geophysics
Report/Patent Number
GSFC-E-DAA-TN8998
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NNX10AU63A
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Public Use Permitted.
Keywords
photometers
dust
sun
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