Dust over Saudi Arabia from multisource data: case studies in winter and spring

Abstract

In the Arabian Peninsula, dust storms constitute a significant natural hazard, impacting the region’s climate, human health, and socio-economic development. This paper discusses the dust climatology based on multi-source data spanning the period 1980‒2023 over the Arabian Peninsula. Moreover, case studies of severe dust events during the winter and spring seasons are simulated using the WRF-Chem model. Climatic conditions related to dust events were obtained from observations. Model simulated climatic variables were evaluated against observations. A climatological study conducted over the study area found that dust aerosol levels were highest during spring and summer, although they were present every month. In the recent decade (2011‒2020), aerosol decreased at the rate of 0.103 (0.064) per decade obtained from Terra-MODIS (MERRA-2). Apart from these, the results of two severe dust events demonstrated that a drop in temperature and pressure, along with a sudden rise in wind speed and a temporary increase in humidity, characterize the onset of dust events. During the dust event, low temperatures continued, wind speed decreased, and pressure gradually increased. The WRF-Chem model simulates these basic synoptic characteristics of meteorological variables in both winter and spring. The dust wall was higher (300 hPa) in the spring case as compared to the winter (550 hPa) case. A denser dust concentration was observed in the winter case (5000 µg m⁻³) than in the spring case (2000 µg m⁻³). So far, this is the first analysis of such dust heights on walls in the region. A more thorough analysis of case studies is required, and the WRF-Chem model should be parameterized to forecast dust storms across the area to ensure sustainable socio-economic development.