The study of a severe dust storm over Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and parts of the Indian Ocean with two operational dust forecasting models

The entry of dust particles into water areas, which has increased sharply in recent years, causes a lot of environmental damage. The Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman are among the water areas that are covered with dust many times of the year.

In this study, a severe dust from July 27 to 31, 2018 is analyzed, in which a large part of the Persian Gulf, Oman Sea and the western part of the Indian Ocean was involved. To study this phenomenon from different perspectives, satellite products, visibility from synoptic stations and synoptic maps were analyzed and the output of two numerical dust models of United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration-Goddard Earth Observing System (NASA-GEOS) and Dust Regional Atmospheric Model with 8 categories-Monitoring Atmospheric Composition and Climate (DREAM8-MACC) were examined. To qualitative and quantitative evaluate of the model outputs, the Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) of TERRA/MODIS was used.

Satellite imagery shows that in this case study, parts of the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman were affected by dust, and on July 30, dust particles entered the western half of the Indian Ocean. Comparison of model outputs with satellite data resulted that both models underestimate the AOD values, especially over water, and do not show well the entrance of dust particles into the eastern part of the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the western half of the Indian Ocean.

Qualitative and quantitative comparison of AOD output of the two models with satellite data showed that the NASA-GEOS model had better performance and its output correlation with observational data was higher.