Earthdata Forum

Hi,

I am looking for time and ___location of "Dust Storms" in the past 20 years.

Below page provides AIRS (Aqua) AIRIBQAP_NRT.005 data for "Dust Score" which is "an indication of where large dust storms may form and the areas that may be affected"

https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/find-data/near-real-time/hazards-and-disasters/dust-storms

Is there a value for "Dust Score" (i.e. 450) that we can be 100% sure that values higher than that represent a "Dust Storm"?

THank you,
Soheil

You can find a more detailed description of how the dust_score is calculated in DeSouza-Machado et al. (2010). Although DeSouza-Machado et al. (2010) say that there are very few false positives over tropical and mid-latitude oceans when the dust_score is above 380, you can perform your own assessment to verify which dust_score threshold meets your needs.

Also, at this time, the dust flag in Worldview is produced from the "AIRS/Aqua L2 Support Retrieval (AIRS-only) V006" product (or the equivalent NRT product if that is not available). The AIRS Level 2 User Guide also points out that the dust_score is not valid if the dust_flag is negative.

DeSouza-Machado, S. G., et al. (2010), Infrared retrievals of dust using AIRS: Comparisons of optical depths and heights derived for a North African dust storm to other collocated EOS A-Train and surface observations, J. Geophys. Res., 115, D15201, doi:10.1029/2009JD012842.

AIRS Science Team/Joao Teixeira (2013), AIRS/Aqua L2 Support Retrieval (AIRS-only) V006, Greenbelt, MD, USA, Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC), Accessed: [Data Access Date], 10.5067/Aqua/AIRS/DATA208

https://docserver.gesdisc.eosdis.nasa.gov/public/project/AIRS/V7_L2_Product_User_Guide.pdf