WRF-Chem v3.9 simulations of the East Asian dust storm in May 2017: modeling sensitivities to dust emission and dry deposition schemes

Abstract

Abstract. Dust aerosol plays an important role in the radiative budget and hydrological cycle, but large uncertainties remain for simulating dust emission and dry deposition processes in models. In this study, we investigated dust simulation sensitivity to two dust emission schemes and three dry deposition schemes for a severe dust storm during May 2017 over East Asia using the Weather Research and Forecasting model coupled with chemistry (WRF-Chem). Results showed that simulated dust loading is very sensitive to different dry deposition schemes, with the relative difference in dust loading using different dry deposition schemes ranging from 20 %–116 %. Two dust emission schemes are found to produce significantly different spatial distributions of dust loading. The difference in dry deposition velocity in different dry deposition schemes comes from the parameterization of collection efficiency from impaction and rebound effect. An optimal combination of dry deposition scheme and dust emission scheme has been identified to best simulate the dust storm in comparison with observation. The optimal dry deposition scheme accounts for the rebound effect and its collection efficiency from impaction changes with the land use categories and therefore has a better physical treatment of dry deposition velocity. Our results highlight the importance of dry deposition schemes for dust simulation.