Preliminary findings from the Synergetic Surface-based and Satellite-borne Measurements of Arid-region Aerosol and Precipitation (S3-MAAP)

Predictions of weather-scale phenomena in the rapidly changing climate regime of the 21st century are a critical need for society. Climate model projections clearly indicate an increasing frequency of severe precipitation events and natural disasters like droughts, tornadoes, and hurricanes, and a resultant increase in economic damages. Accurate high-quality predictions of dust particles and rainfall remain the most challenging. Thus, obtaining high-accuracy, high-resolution information of both precipitation and aerosol loading for all weather conditions over land, in particular, over drylands, remains critical. For instance, within a recent extreme precipitation event around Lubbock (May 2023), we observed a spatial variability of more than 5 cm in monthly accumulated rainfall within a 30 by 30 km domain. A single day flash flooding event (June 1, 2023) recorded more than 7 cm of precipitation within 3 hours at a site located 50 km south of Lubbock yielding highway closure for > 2 days and extreme crop and property damage.

Within NASA’s recent initiative of Increasing Participation of Minority Serving Institutions (IPMSI), Texas Tech University became a ground validation site for the measurements of both aerosol optical depths for AERONET and precipitation measurements for the ground validation network within GPM Project. The measurements of S³-MAAP (Synergetic Surface-based and Satellite-borne Measurements of Arid-region Aerosol and Precipitation) aims to provide new benchmark for performing weather-scale (both mesoscale and synoptic scale) validation of satellite measurements of AOD and precipitations. This work leverages our existing remote sensing facilities, including a 200-m meteorological tower, and the 150-station West Texas Mesonet to engage and train undergraduate and graduate students in an MSI for hands-on research to help gain experiences in acquiring, analyzing, and communicating the results. Finally, this research work combines aerosol, precipitation, and meteorological measurements, segregated according to weather types, severity, and aerosol regimes, and will have an important societal impact on people’s weather-awareness related to poor air quality and extreme rainfall events. We will present a brief overview along with some selected research highlights from S³-MAAP.