Assessing the WRF-chem model in simulating the Saharan dust concentration over the Mediterranean region
Abstract
Mineral dust constitutes one of the main air pollutants in the Mediterranean. Furthermore,
dust is known to affect the atmospheric dynamics and thermodynamics, having thus a strong
impact on convection and rainfall. The African desert of Sahara constitutes the worldwide
main source of dust. However, the quantification of the dust export from the African
continent towards the Mediterranean is delicate issue. Indeed, monitoring atmospheric dust
concentration is a scientific challenge, mainly due to the uncertainties linked with the
remoteness of observations (satellites), as also due to the absence of a sufficiently dense
surface observational network over the North African coasts. Consequently the scientific
analysis in this issue resides strongly to modeling of atmospheric physics and chemistry.
Currently, one of the main challenges is to best simulate the dust uptakes and transport since
their source over the African continent.
To this end, we evaluate an ensemble of simulations performed with the WRF-chem
atmospheric/chemistry model to properly represent dust concentrations during the period of
June 2011. This period offers a unique opportunity to compare model outputs with airborne
observations, taken during the FENNEC project over the Saharan desert. Furthermore, we
compare the model outputs with a variety of surface measurements and satellite observations.
This work aims at determining the most efficient parameterization scheme for dust
forecasting purposes.