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New Saharan wind observations reveal substantial biases in analysed dust-generating winds
- Source :
- Atmospheric Science Letters. 18:366-372
- Publication Year :
- 2017
- Publisher :
- Wiley, 2017.
-
Abstract
- For the remote Sahara, the Earth's largest dust source, there has always been a near-absence of data for evaluating models. Here, new observations from the Fennec project are used along with Sahelian data from the African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analysis (AMMA) to give an unprecedented evaluation of dust-generating winds in the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts ERA-Interim reanalysis (ERA-I). Consistent with past studies, near-surface, high-speed winds are lacking in ERA-I and the diurnal variability is under-represented. During the summer monsoon season, correlations of ERA-I with observed wind-speed are low (∼0.35 in Sahel and 0.25–0.4 in the Sahara). Fennec data show for the first time that: (1) correlations are reduced even in the Sahara, not directly influenced by the monsoon, (2) the systematic underestimation of observed winds by ERA-I in the summertime Sahel extends into the central Sahara: potentially explaining the failure of global models to capture the observed global dust maximum that occurs over the summertime Sahara (such as CMIP5), and demonstrates that modelled winds must be improved if they are to capture this key feature of the climatology.
- Subjects :
- Atmospheric Science
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
13. Climate action
Multidisciplinary analysis
Climatology
Summer monsoon season
Environmental science
010502 geochemistry & geophysics
Monsoon
Atmospheric sciences
01 natural sciences
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 1530261X
- Volume :
- 18
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Atmospheric Science Letters
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........491934db49f605a5f66da6ae174f56b3