Atmospheric warming due to dust absorption over Afro-Asian regions

Abstract

There have been several investigations to understand the impact of Saharan dust layer on radiative heat balance. However, there are few studies on the impact of dust over Asian regions which is unique in aerosol perspective because of co-existence of natural and anthropogenic aerosols. Here, we examine the surface cooling and lower atmospheric warming (and hence heating rate) due to dust over Afro-Asian regions using collocated data from METEOSAT (of ESA) and MODIS (of NASA). Large reduction of surface reaching solar radiation as much as 10 to 15 W m⁻² due to dust was observed simultaneous with a lower atmospheric warming of 0.3 to 0.5 K/day. During local noon warming was as large as 3K over desert regions. The large dust heating at source regions and its impact over ocean due to transported dust raises several issues which need to be understood.