Understanding the Role of Changes in Land-Use/Land-Cover and Atmospheric Dust Loading and their Coupling on Climate Change in the NEESPI Study Domain Drylands

This project is being conducted by a multi-institutional international science team lead by researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology. The overall goal of this project is to gain an improved understanding of how and to what extent land-cover/land-use changes and varying dust loadings and their interactions have been affecting climate of drylands in the NEESPI study domain over the past 50 years. Growing evidence suggests that changes in land use/land cover and atmospheric dust loadings are among the key drivers of observed climate change in the NEESPI dryland region. Desiccation of the Aral Sea, conversion of the steppe in Kazakhstan to agricultural fields, and severe desertification of northeast China are just a few examples of land-use changes that have altered the source and emission of dust. The impacts of dust storms are not only regional, but may affect areas thousands of kilometers from their source, making interactions between climate change, land -use and dust aerosols globally relevant. To improve the ability to predict impacts of dust on the climate and environment, one goal of this project it to develop a regional dust modeling system for Central and East Asia. This involves development and implementation of a new dust module DuMo into the NCAR Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The new dust module includes two different state-of-the-art schemes that explicitly account for land properties (including vegetation and soil moisture) and meteorology, providing a new modeling capability for studying land- atmospheric dust interactions. Another component of this project is the development of the Asian Dust Databank by integrating the diverse satellite and ground-based data on land-use/land-cover, atmospheric mineral dust, and climatic variables in Central and East Asia. Establishing an observation-based climatology of dust storm events is one of the key goals of this effort. Figure 1 shows the analysis of WMO dust present weather frequency from 1950 to 2006, revealing complex patters of spatial and temporal distributions of dust outbreaks. The newly developed WRFDuMo regional modeling system in conjunction with the Asian Dust Databank is being used to study the effect of dust and LCLUC on climate of drylands in the NEESPI study domain.