City of Las Cruces

Extreme weather impacts our transportation system in many ways. This project focuses on dust storms, particularly as they connect to drought. One goal is to increase the safety of drivers during these events along the Interstate 10 in southwestern New Mexico, where danger from dust storms often occurs. An early warning dust forecast system could minimize the number of vehicle accidents and associated fatalities on New Mexico highways. A neural network camera study indicated an accuracy of 97% and a precision of 94% for dust storm classification utilizing a combination of hue, saturation, and value bands. Researchers successfully acquired additional instrumentation to test a new early warning system that is different from roadway information systems often installed along highways. A Vaisala CL51 ceilometer was purchased by NMDOT in 2019 to sense dust plumes as they form over the dust source areas. The instrument is currently being tested in the laboratory and will be tested outside during Summer 2020 to determine locations where it will be most useful.

This research project was highlighted in the 2019 NOAA Science Report, page 40. https://nrc.noaa.gov/Portals/0/edited%20final%20report.pdf

The impacts of the urban heat island (UHI) and extreme heat events are well documented, including increases in heat-related public health issues, stresses on urban ecology, and energy usage to mitigate the higher temperatures. Increases in urban heat is of particular concern to cities in the Southwest, since it counteracts the cooling that otherwise normally occurs at night. While UHI mapping and modeling has become more sophisticated in recent years, there is still an information gap between the heat maps and models, urban planning and design strategies to decrease heat, and the use of that information in policy decision making. This study documented the current use of urban heat maps and models in communities in Arizona and New Mexico and evaluated best practices and opportunities to increase their usability.

Dust storms in the Southwest U.S. and northern Mexico continue to be a serious health and safety issue. This project aims to locate the sources of dust that have impacted people in southwestern New Mexico, northwestern Chihuahua, and west Texas. Researchers continued surveillance of dust storms and determined the latitude and longitude of each event. To better understand the characteristics of the land surface from where the dust emission occurs, researchers identified more than 2,000 locations responsible for a dust plume as seen in satellite imagery and are in the process of understanding the state-of-the-land surface at those locations. Researchers also have started work to construct a synoptic climatology of these dust storms to increase their ability to forecast these events.

Dust storms in the Southwest United States and northern Mexico continue to create serious health and safety issues. In a continued effort to locate the sources of dust, researchers continued surveillance of dust storms and determined the latitude and longitude of these storms.

Findings: Researchers completed their work designing a method to characterize dust storm events using data from the North American Regional Reanalysis model archive. Based on 60 dust storm events, they generated patterns to compare with non-dust days. While that method proved to be successful in identifying dust storms, it also identified other non-dust events. One particular variable that needs to be included in the future is soil moisture.

For more information documenting dust events that impacted New Mexico, northwestern Chihuahua, and west Texas: (http://nmborderaq.blogspot.com/)

For videos published on the New Mexico Climate Center’s YouTube channel to support outreach on climate, air quality, and projects at the New Mexico Climate Center: (https://www.youtube.com/NMClimate).