Can changes in the amount of dust from the Sahara desert in Africa impact North Atlantic hurricanes? The CEM group, in collaboration with the Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, has published a new study on this question. In a climate model with sufficient resolution to represent tropical cyclones, two simulations for 1980–2012 are run with standard and low amounts of dust, respectively. In the low dust simulation, tropical cyclone frequency increases globally. In the North Atlantic where storms can be impacted directly by African dust, storms become more frequent, longer lived, and slightly stronger, increasing their destructive potential. Understanding how dust interacts with tropical cyclones in climate models will help us understand and prepare for the potential changes in hurricanes of the future. See published article here:
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018GL080642
