WRF-Chem Simulations of Dust Storms With and Without Inserting SMAP Soil Moisture Retrievals

In that study, eight dust storms in the western U.S. from 2015-2021 were simulated with the WRF-Chem model at 9 km grid spacing, with one simulation directly inserting soil moisture retrievals from the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite into WRF-Chem ("Insert SMAP"), and the other leaving the WRF-Chem soil moisture field uncorrected ("No SMAP"). Model simulations were validated against ASOS METAR observations of 10 m wind speed, U.S. Climate Reference Network (USCRN) observations of soil moisture content, Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) retrievals of aerosol optical depth (AOD), and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) retrievals of AOD.

For all eight cases, this dataset includes 1-hourly and 15-minute WRF-Chem model output for both Insert SMAP and No SMAP experiments for a limited set of relevant variables, USCRN station observations, AERONET station retrievals, and matched-pairs of valid MODIS AOD retrievals with WRF-Chem simulated AOD. All data files are provided in NetCDF.