NU-WRF Aerosol Transport Simulation over West Africa: Effects of Biomass Burning on Smoke Aerosol Distribution
| dc.contributor.author | Iguchi, Takamichi | |
| dc.contributor.author | Matsui, Toshihisa | |
| dc.contributor.author | Tao, Zhining | |
| dc.contributor.author | Kim, Dongchul | |
| dc.contributor.author | Ichoku, Charles M. | |
| dc.contributor.author | Ellison, Luke | |
| dc.contributor.author | Wang, Jun | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-07-14T16:43:54Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-07-14T16:43:54Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2018-07-01 | |
| dc.description.abstract | Series of aerosol transport hindcasts for West Africa were conducted using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model coupled to chemistry within the NASA-Unified WRF (NU-WRF) framework. The transport of biomass-burning aerosols in April and December 2009 was investigated over two types of simulation domains. One-month simulations with 9-km grid spacing for April or December 2009 covered most of North and West Africa and were evaluated by comparison with measurements of the total-column aerosol optical depth, Ångström exponent, and horizontal wind components at various pressure levels. The horizontal wind components at 700 hPa were identified as key factors in determining the transport patterns of biomass-burning aerosols from sub-Saharan West Africa to the Sahel. The vertical accumulation of biomass-burning aerosols close to 700 hPa was demonstrated in 1-day simulations with 1-km horizontal grid spacing. A new simple parameterization for the effects of heat release by biomass burning was designed for this resolution and tested together with the conventional parameterization based on fixed smoke injection heights. The aerosol vertical profiles were somewhat sensitive to the selection of parameterization, except for cases with the assumption of excessive heating by biomass burning. The new parameterization works reasonably well and offers flexibility to relate smoke transport to biomass-burning plume rise that can be correlated with the satellite fire radiative power measurements, which is advantageous relative to the conventional parameterization. | en_US |
| dc.description.sponsorship | This study was funded under the NASA Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES)–2009 and 2013 Interdisciplinary Studies (IDS) Program (Dr. Jack Kaye, Earth Science Research Director) through the Radiation Sciences Program (Dr. Hal Maring, Program Manager) in support of the project entitled: “Interactions and Feedbacks between Biomass Burning and Water Cycle Dynamics across the Northern Sub-Saharan African Region” (Project PI: Charles Ichoku). The MERRA-2 data were provided by the NASA Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO). Lauren Zamora of NASA GSFC and the University of Maryland helped to make the plots of the CALIPSO retrieval products (Fig. 10). We thank Didier Tanré of Lab. d'Optique Atmosphérique and U.S.T. de Lille and Jean Louis Rajot of Laboratoire Interuniversitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques for their efforts in establishing and maintaining the Banizoumbou and Dakar AERONET sites. We also acknowledge the providers of the sounding data of IGRA V2 and the SeaWiFS, MODIS, MISR, and CALIPSO satellite products. The authors thank the four anonymous reviewers and the journal editors for their helpful comments in improving this paper. | en_US |
| dc.description.uri | https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/apme/57/7/jamc-d-17-0278.1.xml?tab_body=fulltext-display | en_US |
| dc.format.extent | 23 pages | en_US |
| dc.genre | journal articles | en_US |
| dc.identifier | doi:10.13016/m27jzi-fpgk | |
| dc.identifier.citation | Iguchi, Takamichi, Toshihisa Matsui, Zhining Tao, Dongchul Kim, Charles M. Ichoku, Luke Ellison, and Jun Wang. "NU-WRF Aerosol Transport Simulation over West Africa: Effects of Biomass Burning on Smoke Aerosol Distribution", Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology 57, 7 (2018): 1551-1573, doi: https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-17-0278.1 | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | https://doi.org/10.1175/JAMC-D-17-0278.1 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/11603/28673 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | en_US |
| dc.publisher | American Meteorological Society | en_US |
| dc.relation.isAvailableAt | The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) | |
| dc.relation.ispartof | UMBC GESTAR II Collection | |
| dc.rights | This work was written as part of one of the author's official duties as an Employee of the United States Government and is therefore a work of the United States Government. In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 105, no copyright protection is available for such works under U.S. Law. | en_US |
| dc.rights | Public Domain Mark 1.0 | * |
| dc.rights.uri | http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/ | * |
| dc.title | NU-WRF Aerosol Transport Simulation over West Africa: Effects of Biomass Burning on Smoke Aerosol Distribution | en_US |
| dc.type | Text | en_US |
| dcterms.creator | https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9998-2512 | en_US |