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Lower Tropospheric Heating by Saharan Dust over the Tropical Atlantic Ocean

Lower Tropospheric Heating by Saharan Dust over the Tropical Atlantic Ocean Sun Wong 1 , Andrew Dessler 1 , Natalie Mahowald 2 , Ping Yang 1 , and Qian Feng 1 1 Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 2 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 3 NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD

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Lower Tropospheric Heating by Saharan Dust over the Tropical Atlantic Ocean

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  1. Lower Tropospheric Heating by Saharan Dust over the Tropical Atlantic Ocean Sun Wong1, Andrew Dessler1, Natalie Mahowald2, Ping Yang1, and Qian Feng1 1Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 2Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 3NASA/GSFC, Greenbelt, MD (AMS Annual Meeting, January 2009)

  2. Aqua MODIS Aerosol Optical Thickness (AOT) ?

  3. How important is the Saharan dust in the radiative heating budget in the Saharan Air Layer (SAL)? • How important is the dry anomaly in the radiative heating budget in the SAL?

  4. NCEP Saharan Air Layer (SAL) Wong and Dessler, GRL, 2005

  5. NCEP Saharan Air Layer (SAL) Wong and Dessler, GRL, 2005

  6. AUG-SEP 1-2.5 μm 0.1-1 μm 2.5-5 μm 5-10 μm Mahowald et al., JGR 2003

  7. NCEP T (0-0.3 AOT) NCEP q (0-0.3 AOT) Dust (0-0.3 AOT) H( background) Flx(background) GSFC Chou et al. (2003)

  8. NCEP T (0-0.3 AOT) NCEP q (0-0.3 AOT) Dust (0-0.3 AOT) H( background) Flx(background) GSFC Chou et al. (2003) NCEP T (0-0.3 AOT) NCEP q (0-0.3 AOT) Dust (AOT > 0.8) H(Dust) Flx(Dust) GSFC Chou et al. (2003)

  9. NCEP T (0-0.3 AOT) NCEP q (0-0.3 AOT) Dust (0-0.3 AOT) H( background) Flx(background) GSFC Chou et al. (2003) NCEP T (0-0.3 AOT) NCEP q (0-0.3 AOT) Dust (AOT> 0.8) H(Dust) Flx(Dust) GSFC Chou et al. (2003) NCEP T (0-0.3 AOT) NCEP q (AOT > 0.8) Dust (AOT > 0.8) H(SAL) Flx(SAL) GSFC Chou et al. (2003)

  10. Heating Against Thermal Cooling at 700-850 hPa

  11. Conclusions: • Dust radiative heating more than 50% of the SAL Heating • SAL (dust + low H2O) heating ~ T anomaly profiles • (dust + low H2O) maintains the T anomaly in the SAL.

  12. NCEP and AIRS T Anomalies Comparison

  13. NCEP and AIRS Q Anomalies Comparison

  14. NCEP FNL and Sonde Humidity (Dunion and Velden BAMS, 2004)

  15. Evan et al., 2006 GRL

  16. GOES SAL Tracking Imagery, BT11-BT12 (Dunion and Velden, BAMS, 2004)

  17. Previous Work: • Carlson and Benjamin (1980 JAS): 0.8 K/day at 700 hPa (Dust is important. Compared to what?) • Zhu et al. (2008 JGR): 0.2-0.3 K/day below 3 km • Dust is important. In what sense?

  18. Dust Content in MODIS AOT

  19. Easterlies 5 km Saharan Air Layer Warm Dry Dusty 0.9 km Cool, moist Africa Atlantic

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