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Dust Forecast over Europe on 15-16 April 2018

02.05.2018

The eastern part of Austria and Vienna at the morning and during the day on 16 April 2018 was affected by dust transport from Sahara through the Mediterranean. Some visible yellowish aerosol particles partially dissolved in precipitation were evidenced especially on cars, which indicate presence of dust particles.

The forecast of dust transport has been performed by IMGW, using the last released a fully coupled atmospheric-chemistry WRF-CHEM v.3.9.1 model. The initial and boundary conditions at six hours with 0.25-degree grids are taken from NCEP GDAS/FNL Operational Model Global Tropospheric Analysis. The horizontal grid resolution of the model is 25 km, the time step is 90 s. The model is initialized on 15 April 2018 0000 UTC. The forecast duration is 72 hours, while the animation just shows hourly depictions of dust loading over Mediterranean and Europe on 16 April from 0000 to 1200 UTC, when the Eastern part of Austria and the capital City of Vienna were affected by low amounts of dust concentration.

click for animated picture