Abstract:
Human activities may affect wind erosion directly by disturbing soil properties or indirectly through the increased desertification associated with climate change. The dynamical land model (LM4) of the GFDL Earth System Model (ESM4) simulates vegetation changes including leaves, fine roots, heartwood, sapwood, seeds, liter, and nonstructural carbon. LM4 describes the land within each grid cell as a collection of tiles of various types, categorized as natural, secondary (previously harvested or used for agriculture), pasture, croplands, rangelands, lake, or glacier. LM4 also includes a fire model that simulate fires daily and includes both multiday and crown fires. Each of these tiles experiences the same forcing from the atmosphere above but responds with its own vegetation, soil properties, and surface fluxes. Dust emission is calculated separately for each tile before being aggregated and passed to lowest layer of the atmosphere where it is transported until its deposition on land or ocean. This numerical treatment of dust allows evaluating its sensitivity to both climate and land use changes.
In this presentation, after a short evaluation of ESM4 performances at simulating dust, the results of a sensitivity study of the different dust emission parameters associated with land cover types, including land use, will be analyzed. This analysis will provide some insights of key controlling factors of natural and anthropogenic dust emission.
What is the Joint Oslo Seminar (JOS):
Atmospheric and climate sciences have a stronghold in Oslo among the four institutions University of Oslo, the Meteorological Institute, CICERO and NILU. This joint seminar invites renowned international experts to contribute to an informal series of lectures, meant to create interaction with the Oslo atmospheric and climate science community on recent highlights and analysis in the field. All seminars will be held on Thursdays (Noon -1pm).