Meteorological Conditions Associated with Five Dust Events

Airborne dust is an essential component of climatological and biogeochemical processes. Blowing dust can also adversely affect agriculture, transportation, air quality, sensor performance, and human health. As a result, the accurate characterization and forecasting of dust events is a priority for air quality researchers and operational weather centers. While dust detection and prediction capabilities have evolved considerably over the previous decades, improvements in forecasting the specific location and timing of individual dust events, especially extreme dust outbreaks, are needed. Accordingly, Operational weather forecasters and the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) are collaboratively establishing a series of reference case study events to enhance dust transport model development and evaluation. These reference case studies support ongoing research to increase the accuracy of simulated dust emissions, dust aerosol transport, and dust-induced hazardous air quality conditions. This presentation documents five new case study contributions to the reference inventory, including detailed assessments of dust storms from three different regions with differing meteorological forcing regimes. Here, we examine two extreme dust episodes that affected India, a multi-day Berg wind event in southern Africa, a strong but short-lived dust plume from the Atacama Desert of Chile, and a narrow, isolated dust plume emanating from a dry lakebed in Patagonia.