Phys.org May 25, 2023
When the dust that wafts off the Sahel and Sahara regions of Africa mixes with tropical clouds, it creates rainy “disturbance” in the eastern Atlantic which are hurricanes in their youngest form. To study these infant storms, a group of NASA scientists spent a month flying off the northwestern coast of Africa aboard NASA’s research plane logging roughly 100 hours. The campaign encountered and measured one of the largest dust events the Airborne Laboratory capturing data with its instruments. Onboard remote sensing instruments captured detailed profiles of Saharan dust, wind speed and direction, temperature, moisture, and the structure of convection and rain within clouds. Together these measurements provide an overall, multidimensional view of what’s in the air over the northeast Atlantic, shedding light onto how those variables influence weather systems in their infancy stage. The data, which is open and available to the public, will benefit researchers and weather forecasters, especially those in the atmospheric science community… read more.
The CPEX-CV observations offer a window into how dust, moisture, clouds, and the ocean interact to either build or prevent intensification of the rainy disturbances… Credit: NASA/Amin Nehrir