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Quantifying Contribution of Agricultural Soil Dust to Global INP Concentrations and Its Climate Effect (Invited Presentation)

Presentation Date
Wednesday, January 31, 2024 at 8:30am - Wednesday, January 31, 2024 at 8:45am
Location
The Baltimore Convention Center - 329
Authors

Author

Abstract

Dust particles are identified as one of the most efficient and abundant ice nucleating particles (INPs) in the atmosphere, which regulate global mixed-phase cloud properties and therefore have a critical impact on the Earth’s radiation budget and global climate. Previous studies have found that agricultural dust (AD) may contain a substantial fraction of soil organic matter. As a result, they are likely to have different ice nucleating ability from desert dust (DD). It remains unclear how much does AD contribute to global INP population and their climate importance through aerosol cloud interactions. In this study, we investigate the global importance of AD as INPs using the DOE’s Energy Exascale Earth System Model version 1 (E3SMv1). A newly developed parameterization is implemented in E3SMv1 to represent AD emissions, and the E3SMv1 model is also enhanced to track AD and DD atmospheric processes explicitly. Major AD sources simulated by our parameterization include those over Central America, the Sahel, North India, and North China. AD contributes to 13.3% of total global dust emission. Ice nucleation parameterizations based on laboratory measurements of mineral dust and agricultural soil dust are applied to modeled AD and DD, respectively. The simulated INP concentrations are validated against a collection of global observations, particularly with the data obtained in the AD source regions. The contribution of AD to global dust INP population is quantified by using various soil dust ice nucleation parameterizations. The radiative effects of AD through aerosol-cloud interactions are estimated.

Funding Program Area(s)
Additional Resources:
NERSC (National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center)