Enhancing Aerosol Modeling: Integrating the Mineralogy of Mineral Dust into ECHAM_HAMMOZ

Dust aerosols are a key component of the climate system due to their interactions with radiation, their influence on atmospheric chemistry, and their role in biogeochemical cycles. Despite this importance, many climate models treat mineral dust particles as a homogeneous entity, overlooking their inherent variability regarding mineralogical composition. In reality, dust aerosols consist of fine particles entrained by wind from sparsely vegetated soil surfaces, originating from geographically diverse regions of the Earth and shaped by local climate and geological conditions. These particles are a complex mixture of various mineralogies with distinct size distributions.

In this study, we discuss the global distribution of mineral dust aerosol concentrations with regard to the dust particles’ mineralogical composition, using the atmosphere-aerosol model ECHAM-HAMMOZ (ECHAM6.3.0-HAM2.3-MOZ1.0). The model has been enhanced by integrating 12 minerals derived from the database of Journet et al. (2014), as modified by Gonçalves Ageitos et al. (2023). This implementation allows for a more detailed representation of the mineralogical diversity of atmospheric dust aerosols as a function of soil mineralogy at the contributing dust source areas. The results of the model simulations are evaluated against observational data in order to assess the model's accuracy and performance with regard to the representation of the mineralogical composition of dust aerosol plumes.

This work highlights the importance of incorporating mineralogical diversity in climate models to better understand the role of dust aerosols in the Earth system.

 

• Gonçalves Ageitos, María & Obiso, Vincenzo & Miller, Ron & Jorba, Oriol & Klose, Martina & Dawson, Matt & Balkanski, Yves & Perlwitz, Jan & Basart, Sara & Tomaso, Enza & Escribano, Jerónimo & Macchia, Francesca & Montané Pinto, Gilbert & Mahowald, Natalie M & Green, Robert O & Thompson, David & Pérez García-Pando, Carlos. (2023). Modeling dust mineralogical composition: sensitivity to soil mineralogy atlases and their expected climate impacts. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 23. 8623-8657. 10.5194/acp-23-8623-2023.

• Journet, E., Balkanski, Y., and Harrison, S. P.: A new data set of soil mineralogy for dust-cycle modeling, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 14, 3801–3816, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-14-3801-2014, 2014.