Modelling mineral dust aerosol transport at high-latitudes from Canadian proglacial valleys

Across most of the Canadian Cordillera glacier loss will be fully realized before the end of the century, threatening water security and exposing extensive deposits of fine glacial sediment to wind erosion. These dust storms act as important nutrient transfers to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, but pose risks to human health and dust deposits strongly influence the radiative properties of snow and ice surfaces, with far-reaching climate implications. Dust emissions from these locations are either omitted or poorly represented within most current atmospheric models. This project will develop an improved regional transport model capable of well simulating these emissions, enhancing our capacity to model future landscape changes across northern Canada while identifying future sources and predicting their subsequent impacts as sediment is transported and deposited. Previously performed field campaigns have established a multi-year time series of dust observations and meteorological measurements which will be used to verify model capability for multiple proglacial sources.

Faculty Supervisor:

James King;Daniel Nadeau

Student:

Partner:

Karlsruher Institut für Technologie

Discipline:

Physics

Sector:

Education

University:

Université de Montréal

Program: