Development and evaluation of an operational SDS forecasting system for East Asia: CUACE/DUST

C. H. Zhou (1) , S. L. Gong (1, 2) , X. Y. Zhang (1) , Y. Q. Wang (1) , T. Niu (1) , H. L. Liu (1) , T. L. Zhao (2) , Y. Q. Yang (1) , Q. Hou (1)

1 CAWAS - Centre for Atmosphere Watch and Services [Beijing]
2 Air Quality Research Division [Toronto]

CUACE/Dust, an operational sand and dust storm (SDS) forecasting system for East Asia, was developed at CMA (China Meteorological Administration) by integrating a meso-scale dust aerosol model with a 3DVar data assimilation system that uses both surface network observation data and dust intensity data retrieved from the Chinese Geostationary Satellite FY-2C. For spring 2006, CUACE/Dust successfully forecasted most of the 31 SDS episodes in East Asia. A detailed comparison of the modeling predictions for the 8?12 March episode with surface network observations and lidar measurements revealed a robust forecasting ability of the system. The time series of the forecasted dust concentrations for a number of representative stations for the whole spring 2006 were also evaluated against surface PM10 monitoring data, showing a very good agreement in terms of the SDS timing and magnitudes near source regions where dust aerosols dominate. For the entire domain forecasts in spring 2006 (1 March?31 May), a TS (thread score) system evaluated the performance of the system against all available observations and rendered an averaged TS value of 0.31 for 24 h forecasts, 0.23 for 48 h and 0.21 for 72 h forecasts.

Domaines: Océan, Atmosphère

C. H. Zhou, S. L. Gong, X. Y. Zhang, Y. Q. Wang, T. Niu, et al.. Development and evaluation of an operational SDS forecasting system for East Asia: CUACE/DUST. Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, 2007, 7 (3), pp.7987-8015. ⟨hal-00302859⟩