Preprints
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2022-719
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-2022-719
24 Oct 2022
 | 24 Oct 2022
Status: a revised version of this preprint was accepted for the journal ACP.

A new process-based and scale-respecting desert dust emission scheme for global climate models – Part I: description and evaluation against inverse modeling emissions

Danny M. Leung, Jasper F. Kok, Longlei Li, Gregory S. Okin, Catherine Prigent, Martina Klose, Carlos Pérez Garcia-Pando, Laurent Menut, Natalie M. Mahowald, David M. Lawrence, and Marcelo Chamecki

Abstract. Desert dust accounts for most of the atmosphere’s aerosol burden by mass and produces numerous important impacts on the Earth system. However, current global climate models (GCMs) and land surface models (LSMs) struggle to accurately represent key dust emission processes, in part because of inadequate representations of soil particle sizes that affect the dust emission threshold, surface roughness elements that absorb wind momentum, and boundary-layer characteristics that control wind fluctuations. Furthermore, because dust emission is driven by small-scale (~1 km or smaller) processes, simulating the global cycle of desert dust in GCMs with coarse horizontal resolutions (~100 km) presents a fundamental challenge. This representation problem is exacerbated by dust emission fluxes scaling nonlinearly with wind speed above a threshold wind speed that is sensitive to land surface characteristics. Here, we address these fundamental problems underlying the simulation of dust emissions in GCMs and LSMs by developing improved descriptions of (1) the effect of soil texture on the dust emission threshold, (2) the effects of non-erodible roughness elements (both rocks and green vegetation) on the surface wind stress, and (3) the effects of boundary-layer turbulence on driving intermittent dust emissions. We then use the resulting revised dust emission parameterization to simulate global dust emissions in a standalone model forced by reanalysis meteorology and land surface fields. We further propose (4) a simple methodology to scale up high-resolution gridded dust emissions to the coarse resolution of GCMs. The resulting dust emission simulation shows substantially improved agreement against regional dust emissions observationally constrained by inverse modeling. We thus find that our revised dust emission parameterization can substantially improve dust emission simulations in GCMs and LSMs.

Danny M. Leung et al.

Status: final response (author comments only)

Comment types: AC – author | RC – referee | CC – community | EC – editor | CEC – chief editor | : Report abuse
  • RC1: 'Comment on acp-2022-719', Anonymous Referee #1, 02 Dec 2022
  • RC2: 'Comment on acp-2022-719', Anonymous Referee #2, 05 Dec 2022
  • AC1: 'Responses to Reviewers on “A new process-based and scale-respecting desert dust emission scheme for global climate models – Part I: description and evaluation against inverse modeling emissions” by Danny M. Leung et al. (MS No: acp-2022-719)', Danny Leung, 07 Feb 2023

Danny M. Leung et al.

Danny M. Leung et al.

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Short summary
Desert dust modeling is important for understanding climate change, as dust regulates the atmosphere's greenhouse effect and radiation. This study formulates and proposes a more physical and realistic desert dust emission scheme for global and regional climate models. By considering more aeolian processes in our emission scheme, our simulations match better against dust observations than existing schemes. We believe this work is vital in improving dust representation in climate models.
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