As part of a project I'm working on, we are hoping to use the CAMS forecast for dust AOD in our model. We want to use the forecast as we'll hopefully run in in NRT, so we use the latest available 00:00 UTC run that covers the whole local day across Australia, i.e ~18:00 UTC D+0 to ~11:00 UTC D+1 with respect to the forecast run. However, when looking at a notable case-study, it seems the CAMS forecast has completely missed the dust storm over central Australia on 11th January 2020 (see attached figures/images). Is this because of an issue in CAMS and, if so, what is the reason for this?

Thanks,

Daniel






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2 Comments

  1. Mark Parrington

    Hi Daniel,

    The Dust Source Function (DSF) used in the forecast system at that time had some issues with dust in Australia. This was subsequently fixed in an upgrade to the forecast system, May 2020, so that, for Australia, the DSF uses values provided by Ginoux et al. (2012) for natural+Anthropogenic dust emissions.

    I hope this helps. Best regards,

    Mark

  2. Daniel Robbins

    Hi Mark,

    Thanks for the info. After reading you comment, I went back and checked later (after June 2020) forecasts and I can see that there is dust present across SE and central Australia where it should be. However, looking at a very recent and sudden storm that occurred over Western Australia, I can see that CAMS has missed this one (see figures below). Having skimmed over the Ginoux et al. (2012) paper, it seems CAMS might have missed it due to a lack of sources in WA?

    Thanks, 

    Daniel

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