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COAMPS Real-Time Dust Storm Forecasting During Operation Iraqi Freedom

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COAMPS Real-Time Dust Storm Forecasting During Operation Iraqi Freedom 192 WEATHER AND FORECASTING VOLUME 22 COAMPS Real-Time Dust Storm Forecasting during Operation Iraqi Freedom MING LIU,DOUGLAS L. WESTPHAL,ANNETTE L. WALKER,TEDDY R. HOLT,KIM A. RICHARDSON, AND STEVEN D. MILLER Marine Meteorology Division, Naval Research Laboratory, Monterey, California (Manuscript received 18 January 2006, in final form 19 May 2006) ABSTRACT Dust storms are a significant weather phenomenon in the Iraq region in winter and spring. Real-time dust forecasting using the U.S. Navy’s Coupled Ocean–Atmospheric Mesoscale Prediction System (COAMPS) with an in-line dust aerosol model was conducted for Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) in March and April 2003. Daily forecasts of dust mass concentration, visibility, and optical depth were produced out to 72 h on nested grids of 9-, 27-, and 81-km resolution in two-way nest interaction. In this paper, the model is described, as are examples of its application during OIF. The model performance is evaluated using ground weather reports, visibility observations, and enhanced satellite retrievals. The comparison of the model forecasts with observations for the severe dust storms of OIF shows that COAMPS predicted the arrival and retreat of the major dust events within 2 h. In most cases, COAMPS predicted the intensity (reduction in visibility) of storms with an error of less than 1 km. The forecasts of the spatial distribution of dust fronts and dust plumes were consistent with those seen in the satellite images and the corresponding cold front observations. A statistical analysis of dust-related visibility for the OIF period reveals that COAMPS generates higher bias, rms, and relative errors at the stations having high frequencies of dust storms and near the source areas. The calculation of forecast accuracy shows that COAMPS achieved a probability of dust detection of 50%–90% and a threat score of 0.3–0.55 at the stations with frequent dust storms. Overall, the model predicted more than 85% of the observed dust and nondust weather events at the stations used in the verification for the OIF period. Comparisons of the forecast rates and statistical errors for the forecasts of different lengths (12–72 h) for both dust and dynamics fields during the strong dust storm of 26 March revealed little dependence of model accuracy on forecast length, implying that the successive COAMPS forecasts were consistent for the severest OIF dust event. 1. Introduction quent weather phenomenon in these countries. The most severe dust storms usually occur in winter and Mineral dust is generated by wind erosion over arid spring and are associated with cold-air outbreaks from or semiarid land surfaces and is transported locally and Europe and central Asia (Perrone 1979; Walters and over vast distances, causing adverse environmental and Sjoberg 1988). These events can mobilize large amount weather problems over broad areas. Dust particles re- of dust and transport it far beyond the sources. On duce visibility and degrade air quality, thereby disrupt- regional or local scales, dust storms are associated with ing transportation and degrading health. As one of the strong winds and severe turbulence (Xu et al. 2000; Liu major components of natural aerosols, dust modifies et al. 2000). These factors influenced the outcome of the radiation budget directly by influencing solar and the hostage rescue mission in Iran in 1980. infrared radiation and indirectly by modifying cloud Real-time prediction of dust storms, especially quan- properties. titative forecasting of dust concentration and visibility, Deserts are widely distributed in the southwest Asian has become highly desirable as a meteorological service countries of Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Saudi to the public and military activities. The development Arabia, and Syria. Blowing or suspended dust is a fre- of advanced dust aerosol process-oriented numerical weather prediction models makes it possible to predict Corresponding author address: Ming Liu, Naval Research dust particle life cycles including emission, transport, Laboratory, 7 Grace Hopper Ave., Monterey, CA 93943. and removal at high spatial resolution on short to me- E-mail: [email protected] dium time scales. Dust storm prediction models have DOI: 10.1175/WAF971.1 Unauthenticated | Downloaded 09/29/21 11:08 PM UTC WAF971 FEBRUARY 2007 L I U E T A L . 193 been used operationally in Europe (Nickovic et al. modeling system. Such verification will help to improve 2001), Australia (Cope et al. 2004), and East Asia the model and meet the U.S. Navy’s needs for higher (Shao et al. 2003; Park and In 2003; Tanaka et al. 2003; quality weather forecasting. In this paper, we apply, for Uno et al. 2004). At the U.S. Naval Research Labora- the first time, the standard statistical measures em- tory, the U.S. Navy Mesoscale Prediction System’s ployed in the verification of precipitation forecasts to Coupled Ocean–Atmospheric Mesoscale Prediction the verification of the forecasts of dust storms and vis- System (COAMPS), with an embedded dust aerosol ibility. The following sections describe the model, ob- model (Liu et al. 2003), has produced 3-day forecasts servations, forecasts, comparisons, statistical analysis, for southwest Asia in real-time runs since March 2003. evaluation, and conclusions. The focus was on the Iraq region including the Arabian Gulf and the nearby areas, providing dust concentra- 2. Model description tion, visibility, and optical depth in support of U.S. De- partment of Defense military operations. Real-time The U.S. Navy’s mesoscale meteorological system, COAMPS dust forecasting has been carried on since COAMPS, with embedded dust microphysics, is used to then in a combined research and operational mode. simulate dust storms during OIF. COAMPS is a non- This is the first mesoscale model being used in south- hydrostatic and compressible dynamic model applied in west Asia for operational dust forecasting. a terrain-following sigma vertical coordinate. It predicts In addition to the COAMPS dust model, the U.S. turbulent kinetic energy (TKE) for subgrid-scale diffu- Navy has also developed the only high-resolution dust sion, uses a force–restore method in the surface energy source database for southwest Asia that is compatible, budget, and contains explicit cloud microphysics. The in terms of resolution and accuracy, with COAMPS friction velocity, associated with the surface momentum dust forecasting. The previous dust source databases flux, is calculated based on Monin–Obukhov surface- have had a resolution of 1° or less. The work by Walker layer similarity theory. Ground wetness, an alternative et al. (2003) is based on years of data from surface of soil moisture, is calculated following the algorithm of observations, satellites, geography, and desertification Louis (1979) using precipitation, snow depth, ice cov- studies. A dust source database is the fundamental part erage, and evaporation, as well as soil latent heat flux of dust modeling and affects the modeling quality. and moisture capacity. The U.S. Geological Survey COAMPS becomes complete only with the support of (USGS) land-use 1-km resolution database is used to an appropriate database. obtain surface roughness length for various land sur- The U.S.-led coalition forces launched a military mis- faces. The complete details of the model structure, dy- sion called Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) from 18 namics, and physics can be found in Hodur (1997) and March to 30 April 2003. Weather maps, satellite obser- Chen et al. (2003). vations, and postdeployment reports reveal that dust The model domain extends vertically to an altitude of was one of the most important meteorological param- 35 km with 31 grid layers ranging in thickness from 10 eters in the Iraq region during OIF. Early in the mis- m at the surface to 6 km at the top. There are 13 grid sion, a strong dust storm swept across southwest Asia layers below 9 km. This resolution is used by FNMOC and visibility was reduced to less than 100 m. The dust in operational runs and therefore is employed in this storm dramatically impeded the military activities from dust forecasting. In the horizontal, the model uses the the ground to the midtroposphere on 25 and 26 March. three nested grid meshes shown in Fig. 1. The coarse Overall, five large-scale dust storms were observed dur- 81-km resolution domain of 92 ϫ 68 grid points is pur- ing the 43 days of OIF. The U.S. Navy’s Fleet Nu- posely chosen to cover the upstream deserts that might merical Meteorological and Oceanographic Center act as sources of dust. The middle 27-km grid nest with (FNMOC) used these COAMPS real-time dust fore- 127 ϫ 109 grid points is a transition grid from coarse casts in their daily dust weather discussions. to fine resolution. The 9-km resolution grid nest with Previous modeling studies have been either 1) short 181 ϫ 181 grid points covers the focus area of Iraq and term (for a field campaign), 2) not truly operational, 3) the eastern Persian Gulf. This combination of nested forecasts of only surface concentration or aerosol opti- grid meshes allows COAMPS to capture both synoptic cal depth, 4) lacking any statistical verification, 5) car- and mesoscale features of dynamical systems and dust ried out at synoptic-scale resolutions, or 6) operated storms. using a 1° resolution dust source database. The verifi- The data assimilation is performed at 12-h incremen- cation of COAMPS real-time dust forecasting for this tal update cycles using the meteorological data from the special period is a requirement for a better understand- world weather station network and satellite retrievals. ing of the strengths and weaknesses of the COAMPS The analysis and forecast fields of the U.S. Navy’s Op- Unauthenticated | Downloaded 09/29/21 11:08 PM UTC 194 WEATHER AND FORECASTING VOLUME 22 tion velocity u (m sϪ1) is set to 0.60 m sϪ1 based on *t field and laboratory experiments (Gillette and Passi 1988; Alfaro et al.
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