Abstract. Dust storms and associated mineral aerosol transport are driven primarily by meso-and synoptic-scale atmospheric processes. It is therefore essential that the dust aerosol process and background atmospheric conditions that drive dust emissions and atmospheric transport are represented with sufficiently well-resolved spatial and temporal features. The effects of airborne dust interactions with the environment determine the mineral composition of dust particles. The fractions of various minerals in aerosol are determined by the mineral composition of arid soils; therefore, a high-resolution specification of the mineral and physical properties of dust sources is needed.Several current dust atmospheric models simulate and predict the evolution of dust concentrations; however, in most cases, these models do not consider the fractions of minerals in the dust. The accumulated knowledge about the impacts of the mineral composition in dust on weather and climate processes emphasizes the importance of including minerals in modeling systems. Accordingly, in this study, we developed a global dataset consisting of the mineral composition of the current potentially dust-producing soils. In our study, we (a) mapped mineral data to a high-resolution 30 s grid, (b) included several mineral-carrying soil types in dust-productive regions that were not considered in previous studies, and (c) included phosphorus.

Abstract.A dust storm of fearful proportions hit Phoenix in the early evening hours of 5 July 2011. This storm, an American haboob, was predicted hours in advance because numerical, land-atmosphere modeling, computing power and remote sensing of dust events have improved greatly over the past decade. High-resolution numerical models are required for accurate simulation of the small scales of the haboob process, with high velocity surface winds produced by strong convection and severe downbursts. Dust productive areas in this region consist mainly of agricultural fields, with soil surfaces disturbed by plowing and tracks of land in the high Sonoran Desert laid barren by ongoing draught.Model simulation of the 5 July 2011 dust storm uses the coupled atmospheric-dust model NMME-DREAM (Nonhydrostatic Mesoscale Model on E grid, Janjic et al., 2001; Dust REgional Atmospheric Model, Nickovic et al., 2001;Pérez et al., 2006) with 4 km horizontal resolution. A mask of the potentially dust productive regions is obtained from the land cover and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The scope of this paper is validation of the dust model performance, and not use of the model as a tool to investigate mechanisms related to the storm. Results demonstrate the potential technical capacity and availability of the relevant data to build an operational system for dust storm forecasting as a part of a warning system. Model results are compared with radar and other satellitebased images and surface meteorological and PM 10 observations. The atmospheric model successfully hindcasted the position of the front in space and time, with about 1 h late arrival in Phoenix. The dust model predicted the rapid uptake of dust and high values of dust concentration in the ensuing storm. South of Phoenix, over the closest source regions (∼25 km), the model PM 10 surface dust concentration reached ∼2500 µg m −3 , but underestimated the values measured by the PM 10 stations within the city. Model results are also validated by the MODIS aerosol optical depth (AOD), employing deep blue (DB) algorithms for aerosol loadings. Model validation included Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO), equipped with the lidar instrument, to disclose the vertical structure of dust aerosols as well as aerosol subtypes. Promising results encourage further research and application of high-resolution modeling and satellite-based remote sensing to warn of approaching severe dust events and reduce risks for safety and health.

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