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Mesoscale Modeling And Satellite Observation Of Transport And Mixing Of Smoke And Dust Particles Over Northern Sub-Saharan African Region, Zhifeng Yang

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The transport and vertical distribution of smoke and mineral dust aerosols over the Northern Sub-Saharan African (NSSA) region have important implications for regional and global air quality and climate. This study employs ground-based and satellite observations, and numerical simulations conducted with a fully-coupled meteorology-chemistry-aerosol model, Weather Research and Forecasting model with Chemistry (WRF-Chem). The WRF-Chem simulation is for February 2008 and uses hourly dynamic smoke emissions from the Fire Locating and Modeling of Burning Emissions (FLAMBE) database derived from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) fire products. Model performance of smoke and dust simulation is evaluated using numerous satellite and ground-based …