Mineral Aerosol Variability in the Anthropocene

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。沙漠尘埃气溶胶影响气候和生物地球化学。该项目旨在提高我们对沙漠沙尘的时空变异性以及沙漠对气候和人类干扰的反应的理解。它将解决以下两个问题i)沙漠尘埃气溶胶的空间和时间变化分布是什么，并进行不确定性估计？ii)在过去的130年里，沙漠沙尘气溶胶是如何变化的？它们在未来将如何变化？调查员将：1)改进国家大气研究中心社区气候系统模式（CCSM）对沙漠沙尘的模拟，包括对矿物学建模的能力；2)汇编矿物气溶胶的现有观测数据，包括原位元素气溶胶数据、能见度数据和沙漠沙尘地区的遥感数据；3)利用统计方法将建模研究与观测相结合，以提供对来源不确定性范围的估计。与现有的当前气候观测值相一致的分布和沉积，iv)为更多观测值最有价值的地点和数据类型提供模式估计，以及v)提供工业化前到当前和未来矿物气溶胶的改进模式估计，以及由此产生的辐射强迫和气候响应（具有不确定性）。该项目的更广泛影响包括i)改进社区模式CCSM的气溶胶配方；Ii)提高我们对沙漠尘埃气溶胶的认识；Iii)对研究生和本科生的培训；iv)在会议、研讨会和评审文献中广泛传播结果和发现。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Desert dust aerosols impact the climate and biogeochemistry. This project seeks to improve our understanding of the spatial and temporal variability of desert dust and desert response to climate and human perturbation. It will address the following two questions i) What is the spatial and temporally varying distribution of desert dust aerosols, with uncertainty estimates? ii) How have desert dust aerosols changed over the past 130 years and how will they change in the future? The investigator will: i) improve the simulation of desert dust in the National Center for Atmospheric Research's Community Climate System Model (CCSM), including the capability of modeling mineralogy, ii) compile available observations of mineral aerosol, including in situ elemental aerosol data, visibility data and remote sensing data over desert dust regions, iii) combine modeling study with observations using statistical approaches to provide an estimate of the range of uncertainty in sources, distributions and deposition that is consistent with available observations for the current climate, iv) provide model estimates for the locations and type of data where more observations would be most valuable, and v) provide improved model estimates of preindustrial to current and future mineral aerosols, as well as the resulting radiative forcing and climate response (with uncertainties).The broader impacts of this project include i) improvements in the aerosol formulation in the CCSM, a community model; ii) improvements in our understanding of desert dust aerosols; iii) the training of graduate and undergraduate students, iv) wide dissemination of results and findings in conferences, workshops and refereed literature.