The dust load and radiative impact associated with the June 2020 historical Saharan dust storm

Francis, Diana; Temimi, Marouane; Fonseca, Ricardo; Weston, Michael; Flamant, Cyrille; Cherif, Charfeddine

doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2021.118808

Cited by 34 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 103 publications

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“…Dust aerosols are known for scattering and absorbing the Sun’s shortwave radiation flux, leading to a decrease in its surface values, and for trapping the longwave radiation and emit it back toward the Earth’s surface ( Prakash et al, 2015 , Francis et al, 2022a , Francis et al, 2022b ). Greenhouse gases such as SO 2 and NO 2 , which decreased during the lockdown period, including in the UAE ( Teixidó et al, 2021 ), have a similar effect on the surface’s radiation budget ( Chang et al, 2009 ).…”

Section: Radiative Impacts Over the Arabian Peninsulamentioning

confidence: 99%

Increased Shamal winds and dust activity over the Arabian Peninsula during the COVID-19 lockdown period in 2020

et al. 2022

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Section: Radiative Impacts Over the Arabian Peninsulamentioning

confidence: 99%

Increased Shamal winds and dust activity over the Arabian Peninsula during the COVID-19 lockdown period in 2020

et al. 2022

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“…Aerosols are known to scatter and absorb the Sun's shortwave radiation and trap the longwave radiation emitted by the Earth's surface (Francis, Chaboureau, et al., 2021). As a result, they lead to cooler daytime and warmer nighttime temperatures when compared to clearer conditions, in particular in aerosol‐rich regions such as the UAE which is part of the Arabian Desert (Bou Karam Francis et al., 2017; Francis, Nelli, et al., 2021; Nelli et al., 2021). The daytime cold bias is largely insensitive to the choice of the PBL scheme, at least for the three considered in this study, and may act to delay the onset of convection in the model.…”

Section: Performance Of the Wrf Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Assessment of the WRF Model as a Guidance Tool Into Cloud Seeding Operations in the United Arab Emirates

Fonseca

Francis

Temimi

et al. 2022

Earth and Space Science

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With the projected expansion of arid/semi‐arid regions in a warming world, precipitation enhancement activities such as cloud seeding will become increasingly popular and relied upon. Due to the inherent costs, a successful planning is crucial, which involves accurate model predictions. In this study, the usefulness of the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model forecasts for guidance into seeding operations in the United Arab Emirates, where seeding activities have been conducted for more than two decades, is assessed. The WRF predictions are compared with ground‐based, satellite‐derived and radar reflectivity data, and in‐situ observations onboard the airplanes used to perform the seeding operations. WRF is found to have higher skill in simulating the observed cloud top pressure/temperature than the cloud fraction, with the model vertical velocity predictions also more skillful than those of the radar reflectivity. A stronger Arabian Heat Low (AHL) in the model leads to drier conditions which, together with a surface cold bias, limits the spatial extent and vertical depth of the simulated convective clouds. Development of convective rolls in the boundary layer is reported in both observations and simulations and their interaction with cold pools from convective clouds promote the development of secondary convection. Sensitivity to the choice of the Planetary Boundary Layer (PBL) scheme is also noticed, with the Yonsei University PBL scheme giving the best performance. When considering the two factors needed for a successful seeding operation that is, the presence of an updraft and clouds, the model‐predicted seeding regions largely match the areas where precipitation was observed. As the proposed WRF set up can be used operationally, the model forecasts will bring added value to the seeding activities in the country.

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“…Another important issue is that while tuning the dust model to get the desired AOD, we are essentially assuming that the loadings of other aerosol species are well simulated by the model or they are less important. While it is true that dust is the major contributor to AOD in desert areas (Parajuli et al, 2019;Francis et al, 2021b), it may not be the case in some regions where sea salt, biomass burning, organic, and other anthropogenic aerosols may contribute significantly to the total AOD. Although it is possible to get the proportion of DOD to total AOD from satellite retrievals, e.g., CALIOP (Winker et al, 2013), this data suffers from coarse resolution, incomplete sampling, cloud contamination, and an assumption of a constant dust LIDAR ratio.…”

Section: Dust/aerosol Optical Propertiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Editorial: Atmospheric dust: How it affects climate, environment and life on Earth?

Parajuli

Jin

Francis

2022

Front. Environ. Sci.

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The dust load and radiative impact associated with the June 2020 historical Saharan dust storm

Cited by 34 publications

References 103 publications

Increased Shamal winds and dust activity over the Arabian Peninsula during the COVID-19 lockdown period in 2020

Increased Shamal winds and dust activity over the Arabian Peninsula during the COVID-19 lockdown period in 2020

Assessment of the WRF Model as a Guidance Tool Into Cloud Seeding Operations in the United Arab Emirates

Editorial: Atmospheric dust: How it affects climate, environment and life on Earth?

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