Dust simulation in Khuzestan province using WRF/Chem. model (Case study: 26-28 March 2010)

Understanding about the nature, sources and effects of dust storms has an important role in the forecasting and control this phenomenon. Although many researchers have been carried out on dust storms considering synoptic and statistic view, they have not presented numerical methods to reliably forecast and recognize their source of the formation of the dust storms in the Middle East. The goal of this research is evaluate the WRF/Chem model for forecasting dust storm event in Iran. In the first step a dust storm occurred in March 2010 is chosen and by using reanalysis data, synoptic structure is discussed. Then, the dust storm event is simulated by WRF/Chem model and its results compared with visibility zoning in Iran. It can be found, dust storm time series obtained by the model is similar to PM10 time series in Ahvaz. The dust storm event simulated by the model is in agreement with the spread of severe dust storm which had visibility of less than 100 m in Khuzestan province. The model's result does not have an acceptable consistency with the poor dust storm in some parts of Iran whose visibility increased 5000 to 7000 m. So as a general conclusion the model result in the server dust storm has good precision, but in the poor dust storm the model does not display good consistency spread dust storm in Iran.