TACTICAL DECISION AID FOR MESOSCALE FORECASTING OF
DUST STORMS
Ben H. Barnum* and N. S. Winstead
Johns Hopkins University, Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD 20723
(443) 778-7082, E-mail: ben.Barnum@jhuapl.edu
P. Colarco and P. Ginoux
NASA GSFC, Greenbelt, MD
O. B. Toon
University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
J. Weseley and Lt. Amy Hakola,
United States Air Force Weather Agency, Offut AFB, NE,
Abstract
Dust storms impact military operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia.
The capability to reliably forecast dust storms is a fairly new, and gives the war planner a
critical tool for daily tactical operations.
The Dust Tactical Decision Aid (TDA) developed by Johns Hopkins Applied
Physics Laboratory, is now in operational use by the Air Force Weather Agency
(AFWA). The dust model automatically generates 72 hour forecast maps showing
surface and airborne dust concentrations in 3 different mesoscale theaters covering
Saharan Africa and the Middle East, Southwest Asia and China. The dust model
assimilates MM5 weather forecast data and uses a global dust source database developed
by Dr. Paul Ginoux.
The dust TDA was evaluated over a 3 month period for two of the MM5 AFWA
forecast theaters; Saharan Africa and Middle East and Southwest Asia. The dust model
was able to make short, medium (36 hour) and long range (72 hour) forecasts of dust
storm conditions with an average probability of 65 percent, with a false alarm rate
averaging less than 15 percent. The dust model has been used to support operations in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Future improvements to the dust model will be to add AFWA daily
soil moisture data (AGRMET) to improve dust source characterization, and
improvements to the dust source database.