Airborne dust monitoring and forecasting at the WMO SDS-WAS Regional Center for Northern Africa, Middle East and Europe

Abstract

Over recent years, the scientific community has realized the importance of studying the release of mineral dust into the atmosphere, its transport over long distances and its interaction with the Earth's climate system, terrestrial and marine ecosystems, as well as its impact on air quality, human health and various socio-economic sectors. Responding to societal demands, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) launched the Sand and Dust Storm Warning Advisory and Assessment System (SDS-WAS) with the mission to enhance the ability of countries to deliver timely and quality sand and dust storm forecasts, observations, information and knowledge to end-users. This communication reports the activity of the SDS-WAS Regional Center for Northern Africa, Middle East and Europe in the field of dust monitoring and forecasting, with special emphasis on the dust model inter-comparison and forecast evaluation. As part of this initiative, the Regional Center daily provides dust predictions from ten state-of-the-art numerical models run by different research and operational agencies around the world, ensemble multimodel products and comparison with remote-sensing products. Finally, In order to develop the operational component of SDS-WAS and to transfer the experience gained in the research phase to the operational services, the Barcelona Dust Forecast Center was opened in February 2014 to generate and disseminate operational dust predictions for Northern Africa (north of equator), Middle East and Europe. The forecast fields are generated using the NMMB/BSC-Dust model run at a horizontal resolution of 0.1 degrees and distributed through the center web portal, the WMO Global Telecommunications System and EUMETCast.