What is it about?
The Sahara is the largest source of airborne mineral dust on Earth. New data from the Fennec field campaign allow the evaluation of winds in a combined model and observation product. High winds and the day-night differences are under‐represented compared to observations and performance is poorer during the summer monsoon period (even in the isolated central Sahara). The seasonal cycle of strong winds is also poorly represented, missing the summertime maximum in the central Sahara summer time dust hotspot.
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Why is it important?
The Sahara is the World's largest source of mineral dust and it has a wide range of impacts. It adversely affects the health of people, it plays a role in the global biogoechmical cycle, (fertilising the oceans and the Amazon) and is a major uncertainty for estimating the impact of climate change in the future. Therefore, highlighting fundamental biases in modelled winds (in a framework similar to climate simulations) shows areas for future study to improve simulations both for forecasting and for climate science.
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This page is a summary of: New Saharan wind observations reveal substantial biases in analysed dust-generating winds, Atmospheric Science Letters, September 2017, Wiley,
DOI: 10.1002/asl.765.
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