Browsing by Subject "Dust emission"
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Item New insights into dust aerosol entrainment mechanisms from satellite/ground-based data, climate modeling, and wind-tunnel experiments(2016-05) Parajuli, Sagar Prasad; Yang, Zong-Liang; Kocurek, Gary; Dickinson, Robert E; Zobeck, Ted M; Wei, JiangfengAtmospheric dust aerosols have implications for Earth’s radiation budget, biogeochemical cycles, hydrological cycles, human health, and visibility. Currently, there is a considerable mismatch between climate model simulations and observations in representing the dust cycle in terms of emission, transport, and deposition. This mismatch is related partly to our inadequate understanding of the complex dust emission processes and partly to the way these processes are represented in climate models. In this work, we examine these problems from various perspectives with an interdisciplinary approach by integrating wind-tunnel experiments, geomorphological mapping, satellite observations, land surface modeling, atmospheric reanalysis, and fully coupled earth system modeling. The primary science contributions of this work are summarized here. First, we developed a detailed regional land cover map of the dust belt, the Middle East and North Africa. The developed map can be integrated in any regional dust models for better representing the spatial variation in dust source erodibility. We also developed a new observation-based soil erodibility map in global scale based on the correlation between reanalysis surface winds and satellite-observed aerosol optical depth data (AOD). Second, we integrated the developed observation-based erodibility map into the Community Earth System Model (CESM) and evaluated CESM’s performance in simulating mineral dust emission over the dust belt. Results show that the new erodibility map improves dust simulations in terms of AOD/dust optical depth (DOD) and the CESM captures large scale dust storms reasonably well when the winds are nudged towards ERA-Interim reanalysis data. Third, we conducted wind tunnel experiments and explored some of the lesser understood physical mechanisms of dust emission in sandblasting and direct aerodynamic entrainment. Results indicate that surface roughness can control dust emission in direct aerodynamic entrainment and that dust emission by direct aerodynamic entrainment can be significant under certain conditions compared to sandblasting. Lastly, we develop a principal component analysis based technique to extract locally mobilized dust component from the AOD data, which otherwise represent a mixture of several aerosol types and advected dust/aerosols.Item Simulating and quantifying land-surface biogeochemical, hydrological, and biogeophysical processes using the Community Land Model version 4(2013-08) Shi, Mingjie; Yang, Zong-liangCarbon and nitrogen cycles, the energy cycle, and the hydrological cycle interact with each other; all are crucial to atmosphere–land studies. Carbon and nitrogen cycle from the atmosphere to vegetation communities and soil micro-organisms through their transformation in inorganic and organic pools. Ecosystem equilibrium, which is usually disturbed by extreme events (e.g., fires or drought), depends on the speeds of carbon and nitrogen uptake and decomposition. Terrestrial biogeochemistry models typically require hundreds to thousands of years for carbon and nitrogen in various pools to reach steady-state solutions, which are generally a function of soil temperature and soil water. Hydrological processes such as the root transpiration/water removal and the cold-region infiltration with the soil ice freeze/thaw status involved affect soil water content and soil temperature, and regulate carbon- and nitrogen-stock variations. Last but not least, mineral dust, a type of atmospheric aerosol, alters surface radiation/energy balance, and may act as cloud condensation nuclei to modify precipitation rates and eventually the hydrological cycle. Therefore, we were motivated to investigate these processes in different ecosystems. Specifically, this research aims to 1) to elucidate the carbon- and nitrogen-pool adjustment processes in different ecosystems, 2) to evaluate how the root transpiration process affects ecosystem carbon exchange patterns in Amazonia, 3) to analyze the influence of soil impermeability, which is affected by the landscape freeze/thaw status in cold regions, on hydrological cycles at high latitudes, and 4) to explore the effects of surface vegetation distribution and model resolution on surface dust emissions. The Community Land Model version 4 (CLM4) was used in this study. We did numerical experiments in three environments: forest and grassland ecosystems, river basins in cold regions, and the Arabian Peninsula. Our main scientific findings are: 1) the adjustment time of the biogeochemistry components in CLM4 is longer for boreal forests than for other ecosystems, 2) with more water is lifted from deep soil, Amazonia ecosystems start to take up carbon during dry seasons, 3) the timing of boreal spring runoff simulations is improved by reducing the impermeable area underneath the snowpack, and 4) model-simulated dust emissions increase with model resolution as a result of the heterogeneities of vegetation cover and wind speed.