Dust impacts on storm development in the Eastern Mediterranean
- 1Department of Environmental Physics and Meteorology, Faculty of Physics, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece
- 2Laboratory of Atmospheric Processes and their Impacts, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, CH-1015, Switzerland
- 3Center for the Study of Air Quality and Climate Change, Institute of Chemical Engineering Sciences, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, Patras, 26504, Greece
Suspended particles of mineral dust are known to have a strong impact on the evolution of clouds and precipitation from meteorological to climate timescales. The ability to understand and predict the impacts of dust outbreaks on storm development and evolution would strongly benefit water management, food security, agriculture, and flood early warning systems. This is especially true for the Eastern Mediterranean, being a region heavily impacted by climate extremes and events (drought, floods) and frequent dust transportation from the Saharan desert throughout the year. To investigate the impact of mineral dust on the characteristics of storm development in the E. Mediterranean, several cases studies were examined with the aid of the Integrated Community Limited Area Modeling System (ICLAMS), a version of the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS) augmented to include various parameterizations and numerical schemes of the complex microphysical processes of the forementioned aerosol particles. All cases involved storms developed in frontal systems with considerable vertical development and potential for deep convective clouds characterized by strong wind gusts, high rainfall and hailfall rates. In the simulations, dust emissions were allowed to provide particles that act as cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) and ice nuclei (IN). From the simulations we investigate how different descriptions of primary ice formation may affect results regarding cloud and precipitation characteristics, as well as the potential role of ice multiplication processes and the impact of enhanced cloud glaciation on convective invigoration of the storm clouds. In all cases considered (without any effects of ice multiplication and enhanced glaciation from it), precipitation patterns were spatially shifted under the influence of dust, maximum cloud updrafts were significantly increased, and the extreme conditions of rain and hail rates were enhanced considerably (up to 45% and 100% respectively).
How to cite: Chaniotis, I., Nenes, A., and Flocas, H.: Dust impacts on storm development in the Eastern Mediterranean, EGU General Assembly 2023, Vienna, Austria, 24–28 Apr 2023, EGU23-10174, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu23-10174, 2023.
