Periodic Reporting for period 4 - FRAGMENT (FRontiers in dust minerAloGical coMposition and its Effects upoN climaTe)
Reporting period: 2023-04-01 to 2024-09-30
Soil dust aerosols are a critical component of the Earth system, influencing climate, weather, atmospheric chemistry, and biogeochemical cycles. Their climatic effects depend on their physical and chemical properties, including particle size distribution (PSD), shape, and mineralogical composition. However, most Earth System models assume a globally uniform composition of dust aerosols, neglecting well-documented local and regional variations in source mineralogy. This oversimplification introduces significant uncertainties in climate predictions.
The overarching goal of FRAGMENT is to reduce these uncertainties by understanding, constraining, and calculating the global mineralogical composition of dust and its effects on climate. FRAGMENT seeks to achieve this through three major objectives:
1. Generate new fundamental knowledge to reduce uncertainties in the emitted dust PSD and mineralogy, leveraging an unprecedented combination of coordinated field campaigns, laboratory analyses, and theoretical advancements.
2. Improve global soil mineralogical atlases for dust modeling by evaluating and advancing hyperspectral imaging methods, including spaceborne techniques like NASA’s EMIT mission.
3. Quantify and model the climatic effects of dust mineralogy through enhanced Earth System models, incorporating theoretical and observational innovations.
By advancing the representation of dust mineralogy in models, FRAGMENT addresses critical gaps in understanding dust-climate interactions, with implications for improving climate predictions and informing societal responses to dust-related impacts.
The overarching goal of FRAGMENT is to reduce these uncertainties by understanding, constraining, and calculating the global mineralogical composition of dust and its effects on climate. FRAGMENT seeks to achieve this through three major objectives:
1. Generate new fundamental knowledge to reduce uncertainties in the emitted dust PSD and mineralogy, leveraging an unprecedented combination of coordinated field campaigns, laboratory analyses, and theoretical advancements.
2. Improve global soil mineralogical atlases for dust modeling by evaluating and advancing hyperspectral imaging methods, including spaceborne techniques like NASA’s EMIT mission.
3. Quantify and model the climatic effects of dust mineralogy through enhanced Earth System models, incorporating theoretical and observational innovations.
By advancing the representation of dust mineralogy in models, FRAGMENT addresses critical gaps in understanding dust-climate interactions, with implications for improving climate predictions and informing societal responses to dust-related impacts.
FRAGMENT has delivered groundbreaking results through comprehensive field campaigns, laboratory analyses, and model developments. Field campaigns in Morocco, Iceland, the United States, and Jordan integrated advanced instrumentation and sampling techniques to create unprecedented datasets. These include detailed measurements of meteorology, PSDs, mineralogy, and optical properties of soil and airborne dust. The results reveal strong dependencies of dust properties on source region characteristics, highlighting the variability in emitted PSDs and size-resolved mineralogy. Observations confirm that supercoarse and giant particles are more prevalent than previously estimated, and key mineral groups exhibit size-dependent behaviors consistent with FRAGMENT’s hypotheses.
FRAGMENT is closely tied to NASA’s EMIT mission, contributing to the development and calibration of the first global surface mineralogical atlas. New mineral abundance estimation models have been developed and refined, leveraging laboratory and field data. These innovations mark a paradigm shift in the ability to retrieve and apply mineralogical data for climate research.
In climate modeling, FRAGMENT has significantly advanced climate modeling by incorporating mineralogy-aware emission schemes, optical properties, atmospheric chemistry, clouds and radiative interactions. Uncertainties in dust radiative forcing have been reduced, with new findings linking regional variations in aerosol mineralogy to observed discrepancies in dust absorption. The project has also contributed to new global dust optical depth datasets, improved emission constraints using inversion modeling and data assimilation, and quantified the climatic impacts of mineralogical variability.
These achievements are complemented by interdisciplinary dissemination efforts, fostering collaboration and advancing understanding across fields such as meteorology, spectroscopy, and climate modeling.
FRAGMENT is closely tied to NASA’s EMIT mission, contributing to the development and calibration of the first global surface mineralogical atlas. New mineral abundance estimation models have been developed and refined, leveraging laboratory and field data. These innovations mark a paradigm shift in the ability to retrieve and apply mineralogical data for climate research.
In climate modeling, FRAGMENT has significantly advanced climate modeling by incorporating mineralogy-aware emission schemes, optical properties, atmospheric chemistry, clouds and radiative interactions. Uncertainties in dust radiative forcing have been reduced, with new findings linking regional variations in aerosol mineralogy to observed discrepancies in dust absorption. The project has also contributed to new global dust optical depth datasets, improved emission constraints using inversion modeling and data assimilation, and quantified the climatic impacts of mineralogical variability.
These achievements are complemented by interdisciplinary dissemination efforts, fostering collaboration and advancing understanding across fields such as meteorology, spectroscopy, and climate modeling.
FRAGMENT has significantly advanced the state of the art in dust-climate research. The project’s interdisciplinary framework integrates field measurements, laboratory analyses, spectroscopy, and modeling, creating unprecedented insights into dust processes.
The datasets generated through field campaigns are unparalleled in their scope and detail, enabling new understandings of the relationships between emitted dust and parent soil properties. Laboratory methods have been enhanced with high-resolution size separation and innovative approaches to analyzing mineralogy and iron fractions. Spectroscopic methods are being pushed to new limits, improving the ability to retrieve soil mineralogy and particle size distributions at unprecedented accuracy and spatial coverage.
FRAGMENT’s contributions to NASA’s EMIT mission represent a breakthrough, enabling the creation of the first global soil mineralogy atlas suitable for climate modeling. This atlas sets a new benchmark for understanding mineralogical impacts on radiative forcing, chemistry, and biogeochemical cycles.
Model developments have introduced mineralogy-aware frameworks that address previously neglected interactions between dust mineralogy and climate processes. These models offer improved predictions of dust radiative forcing and its variability, advancing climate assessments and operational forecasting.
Overall, FRAGMENT has delivered transformative outcomes: unprecedented datasets, refined methodologies, improved global mineralogical atlases, and enhanced climate models. These results will provide the scientific and societal tools necessary to address key challenges in dust-climate interactions, offering long-term benefits for research and policy development.
The datasets generated through field campaigns are unparalleled in their scope and detail, enabling new understandings of the relationships between emitted dust and parent soil properties. Laboratory methods have been enhanced with high-resolution size separation and innovative approaches to analyzing mineralogy and iron fractions. Spectroscopic methods are being pushed to new limits, improving the ability to retrieve soil mineralogy and particle size distributions at unprecedented accuracy and spatial coverage.
FRAGMENT’s contributions to NASA’s EMIT mission represent a breakthrough, enabling the creation of the first global soil mineralogy atlas suitable for climate modeling. This atlas sets a new benchmark for understanding mineralogical impacts on radiative forcing, chemistry, and biogeochemical cycles.
Model developments have introduced mineralogy-aware frameworks that address previously neglected interactions between dust mineralogy and climate processes. These models offer improved predictions of dust radiative forcing and its variability, advancing climate assessments and operational forecasting.
Overall, FRAGMENT has delivered transformative outcomes: unprecedented datasets, refined methodologies, improved global mineralogical atlases, and enhanced climate models. These results will provide the scientific and societal tools necessary to address key challenges in dust-climate interactions, offering long-term benefits for research and policy development.