Data associated with "Convective distribution of dust over the Arabian Peninsula: the impact of model resolution"
Files
README.txt (4.88 KB) Description of everything included in dataset namelist_AS_15km.input (7.89 KB) Input namelist for AS 15-km resolution simulation namelist_BMJ_3km.input (7.31 KB) Input namelist for one-way nested (ndown.exe) 3-km resolution simulation from the 15-km BMJ simulation namelist_BMJ_15km.input (7.89 KB) Input namelist for BMJ 15-km resolution simulation namelist_GD_15km.input (7.9 KB) Input namelist for GD 15-km resolution simulation
Date
2020
Authors
Bukowski, Jennie
van den Heever, Sue
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract
Along the coasts of the Arabian Peninsula, convective dust storms are a considerable source of mineral dust to the atmosphere. Reliable predictions of convective dust events are necessary to determine their effects on air quality, visibility, and the radiation budget. In this study, the Weather Research and Forecasting Model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) is used to simulate a 2016 summertime dust event over the Arabian Peninsula and examine the variability in dust fields and associated vertical transport due to the choice of convective parameterization and explicit versus parameterized convection. Simulations are run at 45 km and 15 km grid spacing with multiple cumulus parameterizations, and are compared to a 3 km simulation that permits explicit convective processes. Five separate cumulus parameterizations at 15 km grid spacing were tested to quantify the spread across different parameterizations. Finally, the impact these variations have on radiation, specifically aerosol heating rates is also investigated. On average, in these simulations the explicit case produces higher quantities of dust than the parameterized cases in terms of dust uplift potential, vertical dust concentrations, and vertical dust fluxes. Major drivers of this discrepancy between the simulations stem from the explicit case exhibiting higher surface windspeeds during convective activity, lower dust emission wind threshold velocities due to drier soil, and more frequent, stronger vertical velocities which transport dust aloft and increase the atmospheric lifetime of these particles. For aerosol heating rates in the lowest levels, the shortwave effect prevails in the explicit case with a net cooling effect, whereas a longwave net warming effect is present in the parameterized cases. The spread in dust concentrations across cumulus parameterizations at the same grid resolution (15 km) is an order of magnitude lower than the impact of moving from parameterized to explicit convection. We conclude that tuning dust emissions in coarse resolution simulations can only improve the results to first-order and cannot fully rectify the discrepancies originating from disparities in the representation of convective dust transport.
Description
These data represent the model namelists used to generate simulations using the Weather Research and Forecasting Model Coupled to Atmospheric Chemistry (WRF-Chem) version 3.9.1.
Department of Atmospheric Science
Department of Atmospheric Science
Rights Access
Subject
dust
Arabian Peninsula
mineral dust
air quality
dust lofting
numerical modeling
weather models
dust prediction
convective parameterizations
Citation
Associated Publications
Bukowski, J. and van den Heever, S. C.: Convective distribution of dust over the Arabian Peninsula: the impact of model resolution, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 20, 2967–2986, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-2967-2020, 2020.