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Dust storms modeling and their impacts on air quality and radiation budget over Iran using WRF-Chem

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Abstract

The main objective of this research work is to simulate dust storms and evaluate their impacts on air quality and radiation budget over Iran using WRF-Chem coupled model. Two appropriately strong dust storms: May 22–25, 2012 and April 22–25, 2015. According to the results, in the Middle East, countries where sources with highest emission rates are placed include Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Turkmenistan, and major hot spots inside Iran in the southwestern regions. During both of above storms, very high dust concentrations have been simulated. Domain and simulation period average dust concentration have been estimated to be 402 and 515 μg/m3 over Iran during May-2012 and April-2015 dust storms, respectively. Also, 24 h average dust concentration exceeds 7000 μg/m3 in some regions in the Middle East. Comparison of simulated and observed extinction coefficients and aerosol optical depths (AOD) shows an underestimation for domain averaged AOD. However, spatial and temporal distribution patterns of dust have been well simulated by the developed model. Using two parallel simulations with and without dusts, impacts of dust aerosols on radiation and some meteorological parameters have been evaluated. According to the results, dust aerosols led to negative short-wave (SW) radiative perturbation at the earth’s surface and top of atmosphere (TOA). These radiative perturbations were positive for long-wave (LW) radiation. Stronger negative diurnal perturbations for sensible heat flux, rather than positive nocturnal perturbation which caused 24 h average perturbation to be negative. Nevertheless, the weaker diurnal (negative) rather than nocturnal (positive) surface temperature perturbations made the 24-h average temperature perturbation positive.

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Dr. Irannejad and Dr. Alizadeh-Choobari from Institute of Geophysics at the University of Tehran, and the anonymous reviewer for their helpful suggestions and comments on this article, and Dr. Niksokhan and Mr. Roozitalab from Computing Center at the Graduate Faculty of Environment for providing hardware facilities for this research work. We also acknowledge the principal investigators of AERONET station at Kuwait University for providing observational data. All MODIS and AIRS data products used in this investigation are obtained using EARTHDATA (https://earthdata.nasa.gov) and GIOVANNI (http://giovanni.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov). It should be noted that major parts of the visualization and analysis of the simulation’s results have been done using Integrated Data Viewer (IDV) from UCAR/Unidata and Climate Data Operators (CDO). This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies from the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

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  1. Department of Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Environment, University of Tehran, P.O. Box: 14155-6135, No. 15, Ghods Street, Enghelab ave, Tehran, Iran

    Khosro Ashrafi, Majid Shafiepour Motlagh & Soroush Esmaeili Neyestani

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  1. Khosro Ashrafi
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  2. Majid Shafiepour Motlagh
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  3. Soroush Esmaeili Neyestani
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Correspondence to Khosro Ashrafi.

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Ashrafi, K., Motlagh, M.S. & Neyestani, S.E. Dust storms modeling and their impacts on air quality and radiation budget over Iran using WRF-Chem. Air Qual Atmos Health 10, 1059–1076 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11869-017-0494-8

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