Developing a Dust Emission Procedure for Central Asia

Abstract

Airborne mineral dust is thought to have a significant influence on the climate through absorbing and scattering both shortwave and longwave radiations and affecting cloud microphysical processes. However, a knowledge of long-term dust emissions is limited from both temporal and spatial perspectives. Here, we have developed a quantitative climatology: the column-integrated mass of the dust aerosol loading in Central Asia by incorporating the dust module (DuMo) into the Weather Research and Forecasting coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) model and accounting for regional climate and Land-Cover and Land-Use Changes for the 1950-2010 period in April. This data set is lowly to moderately correlated (0.22-0.48) with the satellite Aerosol Optical Depth in April of the 2000s and lowly correlated (0.02-0.11) with the Absorbing Aerosol Index in April of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. The total dust loading is approximately 207.85 Mton per month in April during the recent decade (2000-2014) over dust source regions. Although only the month of April was simulated, results suggest that trends and magnitudes are captured well, using the WRF-Chem-DuMo.