Data associated with “Direct Radiative Effects in Haboobs”
Date
2021
Authors
Bukowski, Jennie
van den Heever, Sue
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract
Convective dust storms, or haboobs, form when strong surface winds loft loose soils in convective storm outflow boundaries. Haboobs are a public safety hazard and can cause a near instantaneous loss of visibility, inimical air quality, and contribute significantly to regional dust and radiation budgets. Nevertheless, reliable predictions of convective dust events are inhibited by a lack of understanding regarding the complex and non-linear interactions between density currents, or convective cold pools, and dust radiative effects. In this paper, the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) is utilized to simulate the effect dust radiation interactions have on a long-lived haboob case study that spans three distinct radiative regimes: day (high shortwave), evening (low shortwave), and night (longwave only). A sophisticated algorithm is used to track and identify the numerous convective cold pool boundaries in the simulations and assemble statistics that represent the impact of dust radiative effects. To first order, dust scattering of shortwave radiation in the day leads to a colder, dustier, and faster moving convective cold pool. In the transition period of early evening, the shortwave effects diminish while longwave dust absorption leads to warmer, slower density currents that loft less dust as they propagate onward. At night, the haboob is again warmer due to dust absorption, but gustier in the more stable nocturnal surface layer, leading to enhanced dust emissions.
Description
The dataset contains files needed to recreate the two WRF-Chem simulations and files needed to run the TOBAC tracking package. The WRF-Chem Version 3.9.1.1 source code is available on the WRF website: https://www2.mmm.ucar.edu/wrf/users/download/get_sources.html The meteorological boundary conditions (NCEP GDAS/FNL 0.25 Degree Global Tropospheric Analyses and Forecast Grids) are available through the UCAR Research Data Archive (RDA): https://rda.ucar.edu/datasets/ds083.3 The Tracking and Object-based Analysis of Clouds (TOBAC) Python package (Heikenfeld et al., 2019) is available on GitHub: https://github.com/climate-processes/tobac.
Department of Atmospheric Science
Department of Atmospheric Science
Rights Access
Subject
dust storm
haboob
dust event
cold pool
dust radiative effect
dust radiation
aerosol radiation
atmospheric aerosol
atmospheric dust
mineral dust
Citation
Associated Publications
Bukowski, J., & van den Heever, S. C. (2021). Direct radiative effects in haboobs. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 126, e2021JD034814. https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JD034814