Reducing Resolution Dependency of Dust Emission Modeling Using Albedo‐Based Wind Friction

Abstract

Numerical simulations of dust emission processes are essential for dust cycle modeling and dust‐atmosphere interactions. Models have coarse spatial resolutions which, without tackling sub‐grid scale heterogeneity, bias finely resolved dust emission. Soil surface wind friction velocity (us*) drives dust emission non‐linearly with increasing model resolution, due mainly to thresholds of sediment entrainment. Albedo is area‐integrated, scales linearly with resolution, is related to us* and hence represents its sub‐grid scale heterogeneity. Calibrated albedo‐based global dust emission estimates decreased by only 2 Tg y−1 (10.5%) upscaled from 0.5 to 111 km, largely independent of resolution. Without adjusting wind fields, this scaling uncertainty is within recent estimates of global dust emission model uncertainty (±14.9 Tg y−1). This intrinsic scaling capability of the albedo‐based approach offers considerable potential to reduce resolution dependency of dust cycle modeling and improve the representation of local dust emission in Earth system models and operational air quality forecasting.