A theory is developed to describe the dependence upon roughness density of the threshold friction velocity ratio R t, the ratio of the threshold friction velocity of an erodible surface without roughness to that of the surface with nonerodible roughness present. The roughness density is quantified by the frontal area index A. The prediction is R t -(1 -mrrA)-•/2(1 + m/3A) -•/2, where/3 is the ratio of the drag coefficient of an isolated roughness element on the surface to the drag coefficient of the substrate surface itself; rris the basal-to-frontal area ratio of the roughness elements; and m (< 1) is a parameter accounting for differences between the average substrate surface stress and the maximum stress on the surface at any one point. The prediction is well verified by four independent data sets.1.

[1] A critical problem in dust research is to estimate size-resolved dust emission rates. Several dust schemes have been proposed but are yet to be rigorously tested against observed data. In the recent Japan-Australia Dust Experiment (JADE), size-resolved dust fluxes were measured. In this study, the JADE data are used to test a size-resolved dust scheme. Our aim is to examine whether the scheme has the capability to predict size-resolved dust fluxes, what the ranges of the scheme parameters are, and whether the scheme is sensitive to the parameters. The JADE data show that dust emission depends linearly on saltation flux and thus confirm the basic assumption of the scheme. The magnitudes of the scheme parameters are found to be consistent with those reported in earlier studies. The estimated size-resolved dust fluxes are in satisfactory agreement with the measurements, although considerable discrepancies remain and are difficult to rectify without speculative tuning of the scheme input parameters. The discrepancies have been traced back to the uncertainties in the parent soil particle size analyses and in the dust flux observations. Ensemble tests showed both model physics uncertainties and parameter uncertainties. It is proposed that the dust scheme under consideration is not as sensitive as previously suspected and is likely to perform well if the parameters are specified within a reasonably correct range.

Abstract. Simulations of the dust cycle and its interactions with the changing Earth system are hindered by the empirical nature of dust emission parameterizations in weather and climate models. Here we take a step towards improving dust cycle simulations by using a combination of theory and numerical simulations to derive a physically based dust emission parameterization. Our parameterization is straightforward to implement into large-scale models, as it depends only on the wind friction velocity and the soil's threshold friction velocity. Moreover, it accounts for two processes missing from most existing parameterizations: a soil's increased ability to produce dust under saltation bombardment as it becomes more erodible, and the increased scaling of the dust flux with wind speed as a soil becomes less erodible. Our treatment of both these processes is supported by a compilation of quality-controlled vertical dust flux measurements. Furthermore, our scheme reproduces this measurement compilation with substantially less error than the existing dust flux parameterizations we were able to compare against. A critical insight from both our theory and the measurement compilation is that dust fluxes are substantially more sensitive to the soil's threshold friction velocity than most current schemes account for.

[1] The spatial and temporal variability of dust emissions from different surfaces in the Lake Eyre Basin, Australia is determined using MODIS data. For 2003 -6 the sources of 529 dust plumes were classified: overall 37% of plumes originated in areas of aeolian deposits, 30% from alluvial deposits and floodplains and 29% from ephemeral lakes or playas. At this sub-basin scale, the relative importance of different dust source geomorphologies varied primarily in response to sediment supply and availability and was not related to aeolian transport capacity, suggesting the Lake Eyre Basin is a supply-limited system. Citation: Bullard, J., M. Baddock, G. McTainsh, and J. Leys (2008), Sub-basin scale dust source geomorphology detected using MODIS, Geophys.

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