HR: 12:05h
AN: A52A-08 [Abstracts]
TI: A Trend in the Northward Transport of Saharan Dust and Its Links to the Trend in North Atlantic Tropical Cyclone Energy
AU: * Wong, S
EM: swong@neo.tamu.edu
AF: Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University, TAMU 3150, College Station, TX
77843-3150, United States
AU: Dessler, A E
EM: adessler@tamu.edu
AF: Dept. of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University, TAMU 3150, College Station, TX
77843-3150, United States
AU: Mahowald, N
EM: mahowald@ucar.edu
AF: National Center for Atmospheric Research, 1850 Table Mesa Drive, Boulder, CO 80305,
United States
AU: Colarco, P
EM: Peter.R.Colarco@nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Bldg 33., Code 613.3, Greenbelt, MD 20771, United
States
AU: da Silva, A
EM: Arlindo.M.daSilva@nasa.gov
AF: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Bldg 33., Code 613.3, Greenbelt, MD 20771, United
States
AB:
During late spring and early fall, Saharan dust is transported toward the tropical North Atlantic Ocean by African
easterly waves. The warm and dry anomalies associated with the Saharan dust, the Saharan air layer, can
suppress the tropical cyclone (TC) activity over the tropical North Atlantic Ocean. On the other hand, it is well
known that increasing sea surface temperatures (SSTs) over the tropical North Atlantic Ocean is responsible for
the increasing tropical cyclone intensity in the last two decades. In this study, we analyze two 27-year simulations
(MATCH and GEOS-4) of dust transport over the tropical North Atlantic Ocean using, respectively, NCEP
reanalysis and GMAO assimilated winds and temperatures for 1979-2005. We evaluate the trends in the
transport of Saharan dust together with the trends in surface temperatures and TC energy over the North Atlantic
Ocean. We find that the increasing trend in TC energy has a spatial pattern similar to the trend in covective
available potential energy (CAPE), which is further related to both increasing trends in sea surface temperatures
and in northward transport of Saharan dust over the North Atlantic Ocean.
DE: 0305 Aerosols and particles (0345, 4801, 4906)
DE: 0368 Troposphere: constituent transport and chemistry
DE: 1616 Climate variability (1635, 3305, 3309, 4215, 4513)
DE: 1620 Climate dynamics (0429, 3309)
DE: 3314 Convective processes
SC: Atmospheric Sciences [A]
MN: 2007 Joint Assembly