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Enhancement and identification of dust events in the south-west region of Iran using satellite observations

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Abstract

South-west Asia including the Middle East is one of the most prone regions to dust storm events. In recent years, there was an increase in the occurrence of these environmental and meteorological phenomena. Remote sensing could serve as an applicable method to detect and also characterise these events. In this study, two dust enhancement algorithms were used to investigate the behaviour of dust events using satellite data, compare with numerical model output and other satellite products and finally validate with in-situ measurements. The results show that the use of thermal infrared algorithm enhances dust more accurately. The aerosol optical depth from MODIS and output of a Dust Regional Atmospheric Model (DREAM8b) are applied for comparing the results. Ground-based observations of synoptic stations and sun photometers are used for validating the satellite products. To find the transport direction and the locations of the dust sources and the synoptic situations during these events, model outputs (HYSPLIT and NCEP/NCAR) are presented. Comparing the results with synoptic maps and the model outputs showed that using enhancement algorithms is a more reliable way than any other MODIS products or model outputs to enhance the dust.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank IRIMO (Iranian Meteorological Organization) for providing observation data for this research, the MODIS rapid-fire team, MODIS Giovanni website and NCEP/NCAR for their technical assistance and useful data. Also, the authors gratefully acknowledge the NOAA Air Resources Laboratory (ARL) for the provision of the HYSPLIT transport and dispersion model and/or READY website (http://www.ready.noaa.gov) used in this publication. Images of dust model outputs are from the BSC-DREAM8b operated by the Barcelona Supercomputing Center (http://www.bsc.es/earth-sciences/mineral-dust-forecast-system/ http://www.bsc.es/earth-sciences/mineral-dust-forecast-system/). We appreciate their hard and valuable work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geophysics, University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

    F Taghavi & E Owlad

  2. Department of Atmospheric Science, Iranian National Institute for Oceanography and Atmospheric Science, Tehran, Iran

    E Owlad

  3. Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA

    S A Ackerman

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  1. F Taghavi
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  2. E Owlad
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  3. S A Ackerman
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Correspondence to E Owlad.

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Corresponding editor: K Krishnamoorthy

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Taghavi, F., Owlad, E. & Ackerman, S.A. Enhancement and identification of dust events in the south-west region of Iran using satellite observations. J Earth Syst Sci 126, 28 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-017-0808-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-017-0808-0

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