Observation and modeling of the historic “Godzilla” African dust intrusion into the Caribbean Basin and the southern US in June 2020

Yu, Hongbin; Tan, Qian; Zhou, Lillian; Zhou, Yaping; Bian, Huisheng; Chin, Mian; Ryder, Claire L.; Levy, Robert C.; Pradhan, Yaswant; Shi, Yingxi; Song, Qianqian; Zhang, Zhibo; Colarco, Peter R.; Kim, Dongchul; Remer, Lorraine A.; Yuan, Tianle; Mayol-Bracero, Olga; Holben, Brent N.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-12359-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 16

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-12359-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-12359-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 16

Research article

|

18 Aug 2021

Research article |

| 18 Aug 2021

Observation and modeling of the historic “Godzilla” African dust intrusion into the Caribbean Basin and the southern US in June 2020

Hongbin Yu, Qian Tan, Lillian Zhou, Yaping Zhou, Huisheng Bian, Mian Chin, Claire L. Ryder, Robert C. Levy, Yaswant Pradhan, Yingxi Shi, Qianqian Song, Zhibo Zhang, Peter R. Colarco, Dongchul Kim, Lorraine A. Remer, Tianle Yuan, Olga Mayol-Bracero, and Brent N. Holben

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-12359-2021-supplement

Data sets

MODIS Atmosphere L2 Aerosol Product. NASA MODIS Adaptive Processing System R. Levy, C. Hsu, A. Sayer, S. Mattoo, and J. Lee https://doi.org/10.5067/MODIS/MYD04_L2.006

CALIPSO Lidar Level 2 Aerosol Profile, V4-21 NASA/LARC/SD/ASDC https://doi.org/10.5067/CALIOP/CALIPSO/CAL_LID_L2_05kmAPro-Standard-V4-21

Advancements in the AERONET version 3 database (https://aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/webtool_aod_v3) D. M. Giles, A. Sinyuk, M. G. Sorokin, J. S. Schafer, A. Smirnov, I. Slutsker, T. F. Eck, B. N. Holben, J. R. Lewis, J. R. Campbell, E. J. Welton, S. V. Korkin, and A. I. Lyapustin https://doi.org/10.5194/amt-12-169-2019

Video supplement

The Godzilla dust event as seen by SEVIRI Qian Tan, Hongbin Yu, and Yaswant Pradhan https://doi.org/10.5446/51548

Godzilla dust plume: Evolution of MODIS (top) and GEOS (bottom) AOD from June 10 to 30, 2020 Hongbin Yu, Yaping Zhou, Huisheng Bian, and Qianqian Song https://doi.org/10.5446/50830

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Short summary

This study characterizes a historic African dust intrusion into the Caribbean Basin in June 2020 using satellites and NASA GEOS. Dust emissions in West Africa were large albeit not extreme. However, a unique synoptic system accumulated the dust near the coast for about 4 d before it was ventilated. Although GEOS reproduced satellite-observed plume tracks well, it substantially underestimated dust emissions and did not lift up dust high enough for ensuing long-range transport.