Climate change and the dust environmental impact in MENA
April 26, 2021
Dust affects solar and terrestrial radiation, the planetary energy balance, atmospheric circulation. Dust produces the world’s largest solar radiative cooling reaching in the southern Red Sea 60 W/m2.
Professor Georgiy Stenchikov, Chair of Earth Sciences and Engineering Program at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
Fig.1. Surface air temperature anomaly projection over the MENA region until 2050 in RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 emission scenarios. The projections are calculated at KAUST using global High-Resolution Atmospheric Model (HiRAM) with 25-km grid spacing.
Fig. 2. Visible AOD trends between March 2000 and February 2015 based on the Dark Target/Deep Blue 550nm AOD from MODIS Terra, collection 6. Pixels with significant trend (p value