This project is motivated by the challenge of accurately simulating aerosol-radiation-cloud interactions in numerical models, the availability of unprecedented information on vertical profiles of…

This is a $504,609.82 grant award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) to conduct research related to improving dust and storm forecasts over North Africa and the East Atlantic. The project has two main objectives: 1) Assimilate aerosol backscatter, aerosol optical depth, and other observation data to improve dust and storm forecasts, and 2) Determine the impact of dust-radiation-cloud interactions on storm development, cloud characteristics, and rainfall.

To accomplish these objectives, UC Davis will develop a regional coupled atmosphere-wave-ocean-dust model and add hybrid data assimilation capabilities to the Gridpoint Statistical Interpolation analysis system. The research tasks include assessing the benefits of assimilating aerosol data, examining the impact of different data assimilation techniques, and investigating the effects of dust on atmospheric environments, storm development, sea surface temperatures, and tropical cyclone genesis. This award does not have a small business set-aside designation.

This project is motivated by the challenge of accurately simulating aerosol-radiation-cloud interactions in numerical models, the availability of unprecedented information on vertical profiles of clouds and aerosols from cloudsat and calipso, and the vigorous dust and storm activities over north africa and the east atlantic during the northern hemisphere summer. The project has two major objectives. The first objective is to improve dust and storm forecasts over north africa and the east atlantic by assimilating vertical profiles of aerosol backscatter data from the caliop and cats (cloud-aerosol transport system) instruments, aerosol optical depth (AOD), and other observations using advanced data assimilation techniques. Subsequent forecast evaluations will help guide our efforts to improve dust and cloud physical processes parameterizations in models. The second major objective is to determine the influence of dust-radiation-cloud interactions on storm activity, three-dimensional cloud characteristics, and rainfall, as well as a storm s large-scale environment (both ocean and atmosphere), the latter of which can further modulate storm and cloud development. The storm types we will study include mesoscale convective systems, tropical cyclones, and intertropical convergence zone (itcz) convection. To achieve project s two major objectives, we will develop a regional coupled atmosphere-wave-ocean-dust (awod) model and add the hybrid assimilation capability for aerosol backscatter and AOD data to the gridpoint statistical interpolation (GSI) hybrid analysis system. Both the awod model and GSI hybrid assimilation system will be used to perform all numerical experiments. The following are the research tasks of the proposed project that will accomplish both objectives.>assimilate aerosol backscatter, AOD, and other observations data to improve dust and storm forecasts.>determine the benefit of assimilating aerosol backscatter data on forecasts of three-dimensional dust and storm fields as well as the large-scale environment.>examine the impact of assimilating aerosol backscatter data on forecasts using different data assimilation techniques.>investigate the impact of the direct dust-radiative effect on storms' atmospheric environments (atmospheric instability, vertical shear, AEJ, etc.) and, consequently, on storms' development.>investigate the impact of dust-cloud and dust-cloud-radiation interactions on storm development (size, intensity, etc.), cloud water/ICE content, cloud classification, cloud optical depth, and rainfall.>investigate the impact of dust on sea surface temperatures (ssts), upper ocean dynamics, and, as a result, storm development.>assess the impact of dust-induced SST and mixed layer depth changes on tropical cyclone (TC) genesis and development.