Recent Advances in Modeling of Interactions of Atmospheric Radiation with Mineral Dust

Mineral aerosols are increasingly recognized as an important atmospheric constituent because of their diverse effects on the climate system. By virtue of their nature, dust particles interact with UV, solar and IR radiation. However, modeling of dust optical properties over this broad spectral range remains a challenging problem. This paper will concentrate on our recent work done towards development of a new generation of dust models for improved radiative transfer modeling with broad-band and high-spectral resolution. We benefit from a new novel data set of physicochemical properties of dust samples that are representative of some main dust sources. The data were used to perform an extensive modeling of spectral optical properties of dust to address the importance of the iron oxide amount (total iron vs. free iron), iron oxide speciation (hematite vs. hematite), and regional differences in the mineralogical composition of considered dust samples. Radiative transfer calculations were carried out in order to explore the extent to which these factors can affect the radiative effects of mineral dust. The paper will present the results of this study and discuss implications for the prediction of dust radiative impacts in climate and remote sensing applications.