Gregory Jenkins
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Earth & Environmental Science
Winds lift dust from the Sahara Desert and carry it in huge plumes across the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Caribbean. This dust is thick enough to affect world climate by absorbing and scattering sunlight.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
Saharan dust
mineral dust aerosols
long-range dust transport
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Oct 2027
What they work on
- Project how Saharan dust emission and transport across West Africa and the Atlantic will change over the 21st century, using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) regional model with the GOCART dust module driven by CMIP5 global climate simulations under three emission scenarios.
- Examine how the North Atlantic Oscillation, a pressure seesaw between the Icelandic Low and Azores High that sets Atlantic surface winds, relates to Saharan dust transport in present and future simulations.
- Test whether intensification of the Saharan Heat Low in a warming climate strengthens surface winds enough to lift more desert dust, using WRF-GOCART simulations.
- Assess whether warming-induced shifts in the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), the equatorial rain band, alter dust transport across the Sahel and into the Guinea region.
More about the research
It reaches far enough to affect air quality in the Caribbean and the southeastern United States. In North and West Africa, it is linked to asthma, bronchitis, and respiratory infections. West Africa is home to about 350 million people, and its population is expected to more than double by 2050. That makes it important to know how a warming climate will change how much dust is lifted and where it travels.
Why it matters
Saharan dust harms respiratory health across fast-growing West African populations. It also affects air quality in the Caribbean and the southeastern US, and it may influence the formation of hurricanes that reach land. Projections of how dust will change with climate warming could help public health planners in West Africa. They could also inform expectations for US air quality and Atlantic hurricane conditions.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Charlotte Demott
Colorado State University-Fort Collins, CO·Earth & Environmental Science
Test how rain-formed cold lids on the ocean delay and then intensify tropical storms and the Madden-Julian Oscillation, by comparing regional atmosphere-ocean simulations with the lid active or disabled.
Amato Evan
University of California-San Diego, CA·Earth & Environmental Science
Estimate how much dust downslope windstorms and haboobs emit globally, by feeding surface winds from high-resolution 3.75 km MPAS simulations into an offline dust emission model.
Andrea Jenney
Oregon State University, OR·Earth & Environmental Science
Test whether the net cooling cloud radiative effect over oceanic ITCZs comes partly from differences in energy carried away by ocean circulation between stormy and calm regions, using reanalyses and CESM2 slab-ocean simulations.
The school
Pennsylvania State University: 60 labs on PI Pages, $1.3B a year on research, 743 research doctorates a year.
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