Regional Numerical Modeling Study of the East Asia Dust Storms

An on-line PRM-Dust model has developed to study the dust storms in the East Asia region by incorporating a dust module with a prognostic mesoscale meteorological model, the Purdue Regional Model (PRM). The dust module consists of emissions, dry and wet deposition, and optical depth calculation. The dust emission model applied herein is based on the dust emission source function proposed by Ginoux (2001). This coupled atmosphere-dust model calculates meteorological processes, dust emission, and dust transport simultaneously. Furthermore, the resultant optical depths due to these mineral dusts are included in the radiation module such that their radiative effects on the regional weather can be considered. The PRM-Dust has been implemented to simulated April 8-24,1998 East Asia dust storms. The meteorological fields generated form the PRM control run has shown great consistency with ECMWF reanalysis data, especially the wind fields. It has shown that the PRM successfully simulates the transport patterns and mineral dust source regions of April 1998 East Asia dust storms as those have shown from satellite observations. This research demonstrated the attempt to utilize the Purdue Regional Model (PRM) to integrate with the dust emission module to perform on-line dust storm simulations, as well as to consider the radiative feedback and climate impacts on the regional scale.