- 1University of Reading, Department of Meteorology, Reading, United Kingdom of Great Britain – England, Scotland, Wales (c.l.ryder@reading.ac.uk)
- 2Service des Avions Français instrumentés pour la Recherche en Environnement (SAFIRE), Météo-France, CNRS, CNES, Toulouse, France
- 3IAASARS, National Observatory of Athens, Athens, 15236, Greece
- 4Faculty of Physics, Aerosol Physics and Environmental Physics, University of Vienna, Boltzmanngasse 5, 1090 Vienna, Austria
- 5Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, UK
The latest range of CMIP6 model dust simulations shows a greater diversity than previous generations of models in terms of dust emission, deposition, burden and dust optical depth (DOD) (Zhao et al., 2022). Validation of dust models is crucial for understanding the impact of dust on climate and climate change, as well as for quantifying socio-economic and health impacts of dust.
While models (and reanalyses) mostly provide output in terms of mass, satellite observations used for model validation are optical measurements. Thus we require good knowledge of the dust mass extinction coefficient (MEC) to successfully validate our dust models. However, the MEC is intricately linked to the dust size distribution, fraction of coarse particles and composition, all of which may vary regionally, in the vertical and in time.
This presentation will provide a perspective on some recent efforts exploring the challenges in model validation relating to dust size, composition, optical depth and dust mass loading in climate models (Zhao et al., 2024; Ratcliffe et al., 2024), reanalyses (Ryder et al., 2024), space-borne lidar, space-borne optical depth and in-situ measurements, demonstrating the critical importance and uncertainty of the dust MEC.
References
Ratcliffe, N.G., Ryder, C.L., Bellouin, N., Woodward, S., Jones, A., Johnson, B., Wieland, L.-M., Dollner, M., Gasteiger, J., Weinzierl, B. Long range transport of coarse mineral dust: an evaluation of the Met Office Unified Model against aircraft observations, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 24, 12161–12181, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-12161-2024, 2024.
Ryder, C.L., Bézier, C., Dacre, H., Clarkson, R., Amiridis, V., Marinou, E., Proestakis, E., Kipling, Z., Benedetti, A., Parrington, M., Rémy, S., Vaughan, M., Aircraft Engine Dust Ingestion at Global Airports, https://doi.org/10.5194/nhess-24-2263-2024, 24, 7, Natural Hazards and Earth System Science, 2024.
Zhao, A., Ryder, C.L., Wilcox, L., How well do the CMIP6 models simulate dust aerosols?, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 22, 2095–2119, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-22-2095-2022, 2022.
Zhao, A., Wilcox, L., Ryder, C.L., The key role of atmospheric absorption in the Asian Summer Monsoon response to dust emissions in CMIP6 models, Atmos. Chem. Phys., https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-13385-2024, 2024.
How to cite: Ryder, C., Ratcliffe, N., Zhao, A., Bellouin, N., Wilcox, L., Dacre, H., Bézier, C., Amiridis, V., Marinou, E., Proestakis, E., Weinzierl, B., Woodward, S., Johnson, B., and Jones, A.: The Mass Extinction Coefficient for Dust: challenges in the link between mass and optical properties for models, reanalyses, in-situ and satellite observations, EGU General Assembly 2025, Vienna, Austria, 27 Apr–2 May 2025, EGU25-3484, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu25-3484, 2025.
