Tong receives 2 grants to study ways to improve dust weather hazard forecasting

Quansong Tong, Research Professor, Spatial Information Science and Systems Center, received two awards from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for research on dust weather hazard forecasting.

Upon the completion of this project, Tong expects to have accomplished a number of things.

First, he aims to have incorporated Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) albedo data into the Emission Data Assimilation (EDA) package.

Second, he expects to have developed a new wind energy partitioning scheme in FENGSHA–a model that supports and enhances National Air Quality Forecasting Center forecasting for North America based on VIIRS albedo.

Third, he aims to have calculated dust emission with a new scheme.

In addition, he expects to have conducted HYSPLIT model simulation with albedo-based dust emissions, evaluated HYSPLIT forecasting with AirNow and VIIRS AOD and conducted CMAQ dust simulation with ARL testbed system. HYSPLIT is a complete system for computing simple air parcel trajectories, as well as complex transport, dispersion, chemical transformation, and deposition simulations.

All of these outcomes are closely relevant to goals to improve environmental prediction and to build a “Weather-ready Nation.”

Tong received one award in the sum of $120,415 and a second award in the amount of $405,917. Both awards began in August 2019 and will conclude in late July 2020.

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