Dust Composition in Climate Models: Current Status and Prospects

Abstract:

Mineral dust created by wind erosion of soil particles is the dominant aerosol by mass in the atmosphere. It exerts significant effects on radiative fluxes, clouds, ocean biogeochemistry, and human health. Models that predict the lifecycle of mineral dust aerosols generally assume a globally uniform mineral composition. However, this simplification limits our understanding of the role of dust in the Earth system, since the effects of dust strongly depend on the particles’ physical and chemical properties, which vary with their mineral composition. Hence, not only a detailed understanding of the processes determining the dust emission flux is needed, but also information about its size dependent mineral composition.

Determining the mineral composition of dust aerosols is complicated. The largest uncertainty derives from the current atlases of soil mineral composition. These atlases provide global estimates of soil mineral fractions, but they are based upon massive extrapolation of a limited number of soil samples assuming that mineral composition is related to soil type. This disregards the potentially large variability of soil properties within each defined soil type. In addition, the analysis of these soil samples is based on wet sieving, a technique that breaks the aggregates found in the undisturbed parent soil. During wind erosion, these aggregates are subject to partial fragmentation, which generates differences on the size distribution and composition between the undisturbed parent soil and the emitted dust aerosols.

We review recent progress on the representation of the mineral and chemical composition of dust in climate models. We discuss extensions of brittle fragmentation theory to prescribe the emitted size-resolved dust composition, and we identify key processes and uncertainties based upon model simulations and an unprecedented compilation of observations.