The simulation of mineral dust in the United Kingdom Earth System Model UKESM1

Woodward, Stephanie; Sellar, Alistair A.; Tang, Yongming; Stringer, Marc; Yool, Andrew; Robertson, Eddy; Wiltshire, Andy

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-14503-2022

Articles | Volume 22, issue 22

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-14503-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-14503-2022

© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 22, issue 22

Research article

|

15 Nov 2022

Research article |

| 15 Nov 2022

The simulation of mineral dust in the United Kingdom Earth System Model UKESM1

Stephanie Woodward, Alistair A. Sellar, Yongming Tang, Marc Stringer, Andrew Yool, Eddy Robertson, and Andy Wiltshire

Data sets

WCRP CMIP6 ESGF Node Earth System CoG sponsors and partners https://esgf-node.llnl.gov/projects/cmip6/

AOD V3 data AERONET https://aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/webtool_inv_v3

MOHC UKESM1.0-LL model output prepared for CMIP6 CMIP historical, Version 20220316, Earth System Grid Federation, Y. Tang, S. Rumbold, R. Ellis, D. Kelley, J. Mulcahy, A. Sellar, J. Walton, and C. Jones https://doi.org/10.22033/ESGF/CMIP6.6113

Model code and software

Unified Model Met Office http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/modelling-systems/unified-model

Jules code access Met Office https://jules-lsm.github.io/access_req/JULES_access.html

Short summary

We describe the dust scheme in the UKESM1 Earth system model and show generally good agreement with observations. Comparing with the closely related HadGEM3-GC3.1 model, we show that dust differences are not only due to inter-model differences but also to the dust size distribution. Under climate change, HadGEM3-GC3.1 dust hardly changes, but UKESM1 dust decreases because that model includes the vegetation response which, in our models, has a bigger impact on dust than climate change itself.