Temporal variability of mineral dust concentrations over West Africa: analyses of a pluriannual monitoring from the AMMA Sahelian Dust Transect

Marticorena, Béatrice; Chatenet, B.; Rajot, Jean-Louis; Traoré, Salifou; Coulibaly, M.; Diallo, Aboubacry; Koné, I.; Maman, A.; Ndiaye, T.; Zakou, A.

doi:10.5194/acpd-10-8051-2010

Cited by 25 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 48 publications

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“…11b). This appears more realistic than the sharp border in the 4-km run, as convective dust storms have been observed along a transect around 148N at the beginning of the monsoon (Marticorena et al 2010). The high roughness length over the Sahel (Fig.…”

Section: Space and Time Distribution Of Convective Dust Stormsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A Parameterization of Convective Dust Storms for Models with Mass-Flux Convection Schemes

Pantillon

Knippertz

Marsham

et al. 2015

Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences

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Cold pool outflows, generated by downdrafts from moist convection, can generate strong winds and therefore uplift of mineral dust. These so-called haboob convective dust storms occur over all major dust source areas worldwide and contribute substantially to emissions in northern Africa, the world's largest source. Most largescale models lack convective dust storms because they do not resolve moist convection, relying instead on convection schemes. The authors suggest a parameterization of convective dust storms to account for their contribution in such large-scale models. The parameterization is based on a simple conceptual model, in which the downdraft mass flux from the convection scheme spreads out radially in a cylindrical cold pool. The parameterization is tested with a set of Met Office Unified Model runs for June and July 2006 over West Africa. It is calibrated with a convection-permitting run and applied to a convection-parameterized run. The parameterization successfully produces the extensive area of dust-generating winds from cold pool outflows over the southern Sahara. However, this area extends farther to the east and dust-generating winds occur earlier in the day than in the convection-permitting run. These biases are caused by biases in the convection scheme. It is found that the location and timing of dust-generating winds are weakly sensitive to the parameters of the conceptual model. The results demonstrate that a simple parameterization has the potential to correct a major and long-standing limitation in global dust models.

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Section: Space and Time Distribution Of Convective Dust Stormsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Dust uplift occurs when the friction velocity reaches a threshold that depends on soil properties, such as mineralogy, roughness elements, and moisture (Marticorena and Bergametti 1995;Shao and Lu 2000). The friction velocity was not saved in the runs.…”

Section: Dust Uplift Potentialmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Parameterization of Convective Dust Storms for Models with Mass-Flux Convection Schemes

Pantillon

Knippertz

Marsham

et al. 2015

Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences

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“…We used measurements of the surface aerosol concentrations extracted from two of the three ground-based stations of the Sahelian Dust Transect. These were set in the frame of the African monsoon multidisciplinary analyses (AMMA) programme, and rely on the tapered element oscillating microbalance technology [18]. The two stations we considered are located in the semi-arid part of Niger and Mali; whereas the third is located in Senegal on the coast, where climate is different.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the core of the dry season, from January to March, the dry and hot winds called Harmattan blow from the northeast and carry high dust loads [18]. These dusts mostly originate from Bodélé (Chad) [19] and are carried by wind over continental distances.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seasonality of meningitis in Africa and climate forcing: aerosols stand out

Agier

Deroubaix

Martiny

et al. 2013

J. R. Soc. Interface.

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Bacterial meningitis is an ongoing threat for the population of the African Meningitis Belt, a region characterized by the highest incidence rates worldwide. The determinants of the disease dynamics are still poorly understood; nevertheless, it is often advocated that climate and mineral dust have a large impact. Over the last decade, several studies have investigated this relationship at a large scale. In this analysis, we scaled down to the district-level weekly scale (which is used for in-year response to emerging epidemics), and used wavelet and phase analysis methods to define and compare the time-varying periodicities of meningitis, climate and dust in Niger. We mostly focused on detecting time-lags between the signals that were consistent across districts. Results highlighted the special case of dust in comparison to wind, humidity or temperature: a strong similarity between districts is noticed in the evolution of the time-lags between the seasonal component of dust and meningitis. This result, together with the assumption of dust damaging the pharyngeal mucosa and easing bacterial invasion, reinforces our confidence in dust forcing on meningitis seasonality. Dust data should now be integrated in epidemiological and forecasting models to make them more realistic and usable in a public health perspective.

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“…Some such efforts were made during recent field campaigns 610 such as Fennec , the Bodélé Dust Experiment (BoDEx) (Washington et al, 2006) and the Japanese Australian Dust Experiment (JADE) (Ishizuka et al, 2008). Longer-term monitoring stations, however, are very rare, with the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) Sahelian Dust Transect being a notable exception (Marticorena et al, 2010;Bergametti et al, 2017). Worth mentioning are also the CV-DUST project (Pio et al, 2014) and the Cape Verde…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Status and future of Numerical Atmospheric Aerosol Prediction with a focus on data requirements

Benedetti¹,

Reid²,

Baklanov³

et al. 2018

Preprint

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Abstract. Numerical prediction of aerosol particle properties has become an important activity at many research and operational weather centres due to growing interest from a diverse set of stakeholders, such as air quality regulatory bodies, aviation and military authorities, solar energy plant managers, providers of climate services, and health professionals. The prediction of aerosol particle properties in Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models faces a number of challenges owing to 5 the complexity of atmospheric aerosol processes and their sensitivity to the underlying meteorological conditions. Errors in aerosol prediction concern all processes involved in the aerosol life cycle.These include errors on the source terms (for both anthropogenic and natural emissions), errors directly dependent on the meteorology (e.g., mixing, transport, scavenging by precipitation), as well as errors related to aerosol chemistry (e.g., nucleation, gas-aerosol partitioning, chemical transfor-10 mation and growth, hygroscopicity). The main goal of current research on aerosol forecast consists in prioritizing these errors and trying to reduce the most important ones through model development and data assimilation. Aerosol particle observations from satellite and ground-based platforms have been crucial to guide model development of the recent years, and have been made more readily available for model evaluation and assimilation. However, for the sustainability of the aerosol parti-15 cle prediction activities around the globe, it is crucial that quality aerosol observations continue to be made available from different platforms (space, near-surface, and aircraft) and freely shared. This white paper reviews current requirements for aerosol observations in the context of the operational activities carried out at various global and regional centres. Some of the requirements are equally applicable to aerosol-climate research. However, the focus here is on the global operational prediction 20 of aerosol properties such as mass concentrations and optical parameters. Most operational models are based on bulk schemes that do not predict the size distribution of the aerosol particles. Others are based on a mix of "bin" and bulk schemes with limited capability to simulate the size information.However the next generation of aerosol operational models will have the capability to predict both mass and number density which will provide a more complete description of the aerosols properties. 25A brief overview of the state-of-the-art is provided with an introduction on the importance of aerosol prediction activities. The criteria on which the requirements for aerosol observations are based are also outlined. Assimilation and evaluation aspects are discussed from the perspective of the user requirements.

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Temporal variability of mineral dust concentrations over West Africa: analyses of a pluriannual monitoring from the AMMA Sahelian Dust Transect

Cited by 25 publications

References 48 publications

A Parameterization of Convective Dust Storms for Models with Mass-Flux Convection Schemes

A Parameterization of Convective Dust Storms for Models with Mass-Flux Convection Schemes

Seasonality of meningitis in Africa and climate forcing: aerosols stand out

Status and future of Numerical Atmospheric Aerosol Prediction with a focus on data requirements

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