Funding: European Space Agency

Description: The Dust-Ocean Modelling & Observing Study (DOMOS) will advance the understanding of dust and ocean interactions in a changing climate through an innovative use of model and observations. The project will develop a new retrieval of dust deposition from satellite lidar data (CALIPSO and Aeolus), will validate the dust deposition field from the CAMS reanalysis and will also provide assimilation tests of IASI and Aeolus aerosol products with the goal of providing a better description of the dust aerosols, for applications in aerosol radiative impacts and ocean biogeochemistry. An improved representation of the physical and chemical characteristics of dust deposition over the ocean is crucial to interpret the observed climatic change responses and to better describe the future ones. This includes a better understanding and quantification of the deposition of soluble iron from natural and anthropogenic dust and of its contribution relative to biomass burning and anthropogenic aerosols which will be one of the main deliverables of the project. A scientific roadmap to highlight the findings of the project and identify possible gaps in the modelling and the observing approaches will also be provided.

Role of APCG: Production of state-of-the-art soluble iron deposition datasets using an improved version of the state-of-the-art Earth System Model EC-Earth3 ((Myriokefalitakis et al., 2021). EC-Earth3 contains an advanced representation of the atmospheric iron cycle, which allows quantifying the contribution of different sources and processes to the soluble iron deposition into the ocean. Our simulations will overall cover a sufficiently long period in the present time (1990 to 2019) to create dust and iron deposition climatologies in a monthly frequency.

Official Website: https://www.ecmwf.int/en/research/projects/domos/