Dust storms in the Sahara and Sahel: Nowcasting and its application to understanding dust emission and transport

撒哈拉和萨赫勒地区的沙尘暴：临近预报及其在了解沙尘排放和输送方面的应用

• 批准号: 2748825
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Leeds
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2748825
• 关键词: Dust; storms; Sahara; Sahel; Nowcasting

"Dust storms are a dramatic weather hazard, and dust is an essential component of earth's climate system, affecting radiation and coupling with the carbon cycle. The inherent difficulties in modelling dust storms mean there is a need and opportunity for dust predictions based directly on forward extrapolations of observations, i.e. "nowcasts", a technique that is very successfully used for short-range prediction of convective storms. This project will develop a tool for dust nowcasting, and then use this tool to fill key gaps in our understanding of dust emissions and the Earth's dust cycle, informing development of models.The project will focus on the Sahara and Sahel, due to their importance for the global dust cycle, vulnerable populations and the high quality data available from Meteosat, which is in geostationary orbit. We will first apply data science techniques to forward extrapolate satellite retrievals of airborne dust to generate nowcast predictions and evaluate these to understand variations in skill. Using the newly developed tool, combined with reanalyses, and other remotely-sensed products we will generate new understanding of sources, and their variability, as well as new quantification of the role of different meteorological mechanisms in dust uplift. If time allows, and as a possible application of the above findings, we will apply the above approach to investigate dust emissions from other important regions, such as the Middle East desert and the Gobi desert.

“沙尘暴是一种严重的天气危害，沙尘是地球气候系统的重要组成部分，影响辐射并与碳循环耦合。沙尘暴建模的固有困难意味着直接基于前向沙尘预测的需要和机会观测推断，即“临近预报”，这是一种非常成功地用于对流风暴短期预报的技术，该项目将开发一种沙尘临近预报工具，然后使用该工具来填补我们理解中的关键空白。该项目将重点关注撒哈拉和萨赫勒地区，因为它们对全球灰尘循环、弱势群体以及地球静止轨道气象卫星提供的高质量数据非常重要。我们将首先应用数据科学技术来推断卫星对空气中灰尘的检索，以生成临近预报并对其进行评估以了解技能的变化。使用新开发的工具，结合重新分析和其他遥感产品，我们将对来源及其变化性产生新的认识，并对不同气象机制在沙尘上升中的作用进行新的量化。如果时间允许，并且作为上述研究结果的可能应用，我们将应用上述方法来调查其他重要地区的沙尘排放，例如中东沙漠和戈壁沙漠。