We have located links that may give you full text access.
The importance of rare, high-wind events for dust uplift in northern Africa.
Geophysical Research Letters 2015 October 17
Dust uplift is a nonlinear thresholded function of wind speed and therefore particularly sensitive to the long tails of observed wind speed probability density functions. This suggests that a few rare high-wind events can contribute substantially to annual dust emission. Here we quantify the relative roles of different wind speeds to dust-generating winds using surface synoptic observations of dust emission and wind from northern Africa. The results show that winds between 2 and 5 m s(-1) above the threshold cause the most emission. Of the dust-generating winds, 25% is produced by very rare events occurring only at 0.1 to 1.4% of the time, depending on the region. Dust-producing winds are underestimated in ERA-I, since it misses the long tail found in observations. ERA-I overpredicts (underpredicts) the frequency of emission strength winds in the southern (northern) regions. These problems cannot be solved by simple tunings. Finally, we show that rare events make the largest contribution to interannual variability in dust-generating winds and that ERA severely underestimates this interannual variability.
Full text links
Related Resources
Get seemless 1-tap access through your institution/university
For the best experience, use the Read mobile app
All material on this website is protected by copyright, Copyright © 1994-2024 by WebMD LLC.
This website also contains material copyrighted by 3rd parties.
By using this service, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.
Your Privacy Choices
You can now claim free CME credits for this literature searchClaim now
Get seemless 1-tap access through your institution/university
For the best experience, use the Read mobile app