Operational Dust Prediction - Mineral Dust: A Key Player in the Earth System - page 236

The DREAM/BSC-DREAM8b Models
The Dust Regional Atmospheric Model (DREAM; Nickovic et al. 2001 ) is based
on the Euler-type partial differential nonlinear equation for dust mass continuity
and is driven by NCEP/Eta. The model was developed at the Euro-Mediterranean
Centre of Insular Coastal Dynamics (ICoD). In May 2005, the operational version
of DREAM was transferred to the Environmental Modelling Laboratory of the
Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) and in September 2006 to the BSC-CNS.
A set of updates during 2002-2005 (Nickovic 2002 , 2003 , 2005 ; Nickovic et al.
2004 ) included a source function based on the 1 km USGS land use data, eight
particle-size bins and an initial version of the dust-radiation feedback scheme in
cooperation with the Oceanographic Institute (Erdemli, Turkey). In addition to
these developments, the updated BSC-DREAM8b v2 model (Pérez et al. 2006a , b ;
Basart et al. 2012a ) includes an improved source mask and updated wet and dry
deposition scheme. The BSC-DREAM8b v2 model provides daily dust forecasts at
BSC-CNS website ( http://www.bsc.es/projects/earthscience/BSC-DREAM/ ) which
are evaluated in near real-time against satellite- and ground-based observations. The
model has been extensively evaluated against observations (see, e.g. Basart et al.
2012b ).
Since recently, DREAM8-NMME-MACC, which is driven by the NCEP/NMME
non-hydrostatic model and includes assimilation of MODIS AOD (Pejanovic et al.
2010 ; Nickovic et al. 2012 ), provides daily dust forecasts available at the South East
European Virtual Climate Change Center (SEEVCCC; http://www.seevccc.rs/ ) .
FNMOC Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Mesoscale Prediction System
(COAMPS)
NRL has developed an online, multi-bin dust module inside COAMPS, simulating
the evolution of the spatial and size distributions of mineral dust particles and
passive volcanic ash. Beginning with operational transition to FNMOC in 2001 for
Operation Iraqi Freedom (Liu and Westphal 2001 ; Liu et al. 2007 ), COAMPS dust
simulations are now run on multiple domains over the world daily, with forecasts
out to 3 days at resolutions of up to 1 km. The aerosol physical processes of
sedimentation, dry deposition and wet removal are calculated using the dynamics
and cloud fields of COAMPS. The dust source is based on the 1 km high-
resolution dust source database of Walker et al. ( 2009 ) that has been developed
based on empirical relationships between satellite observed dust and static land
cover information.