DustClim

What is the DustClim project about?

Sand and dust storms can be a major threat to life, health, property, environment and economy in many countries. There is an increasing need for accurate sand and dust information and predictions to support early warning systems, and preparedness and mitigation plans. DustClim produces and delivers an advanced dust regional model reanalysis covering the satellite era (since 2000) of quantitative aerosol information. It develops dust-related services tailored to specific socio-economic sectors. Thereby it will make a major step forward in the way sand and dust storms affect society, since these services enable to integrate dust information into practice and policy.

DustClim project structure: Dust forecast and observations together with stakeholders’ interests will be the base of the design of the dust-related climate services for aviation, solar energy and air quality.

Highlights

• There is currently a very limited integration of dust information into practice and policy. In this context, DustClim provides reliable information on sand and dust storms trends and current conditions, and develops dust impact assessment pilot studies for three key economic sectors: air quality, aviation and solar energy.
• The DustClim reanalysis is of unprecedented high-resolution (10km x10km) and assimilates satellite products over dust source regions with specific dust observational constraints.
• The accuracy of the DustClim’s products are evaluated using an exceptional wide variety of observations.

Keywords / hashtags

Keywords: Dust; reanalysis; aviation; solar energy; air quality

Hashtags: @Dust_Barcelona; #COSTinDust, #wmo #DustClim

Potential societal impacts

DustClim aims to impact a variety of sectors and communities by benefitting them both socially (improved quality of life) and economically (improved resource management). It creates applied products tailored to the needs of specific sectors whose activities are highly impacted by sand and dust storms such as:

• Solar power generation sector.
• Public health, air quality assessment and management agencies.
• Air traffic management.

A well-evaluated high-resolution dust dataset can be applied to earth system studies to identify the impact of dust on weather, climate and ecosystem, and weather/chemistry forecast.

The role of JPI Climate

There is an increasing interest in accurate dust information because the substantial adverse impacts upon life, health, property, economy and other strategic sectors. Nowadays, research and operational centers are providing mature dust products that are ready to be transformed into services. JPI Climate provides us with the perfect framework to design a first and unique set of dust-oriented services considering the experiences of climate community. We anticipate that JPI Climate will support us with the dissemination of the project’s results by introducing aerosols (and dust in particular) as the topic of discussion in climate audiences that currently only is considering meteorological parameters.