Evaluation of CMIP6 Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) Simulations for Summer Season against MODIS Derived AOD from 2000 to 2014 over Arabian Peninsula

Abstract Arabian Peninsula is one of the highly affected regions by atmospheric aerosols mainly due to the frequent dust outbreaks and storm activities in the region. These aerosols are primarily responsible to change the energy budget that drives the climate system. Besides, the spatial and temporal aerosol properties are comprehensively described based on aerosol optical depth (AOD). Thus, the present study focuses on the evaluation of AOD variability, trends, and performance of Coupled Model Inter-comparison Project (CMIP6) individual models and their mean relative to satellite observation from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) over the Arabian Peninsula during summer (JJA). To achieve this, the AOD (550nm) data of eight CMIP6 models and TERRA-MODIS DTB are acquired for the period 2000–2014. We employed different statistical methods such as simple average, bias, root mean square error, standard deviation, mean absolute error, correlation, and regression for validation purposes. Further, trends and time series analyses are done to assess the AOD variability over the region. The results show that the summer AOD mean is high (0.5–0.9) over eastern and southern regions, whereas low mean values (0.2–0.5) are found in northwestern regions of the Peninsula. Overall, the AWI, BCC, CESM, and AMM acquired low bias, mean absolute error along with high correlation co-efficient and show a good agreement with MODIS. It is also revealed that the AOD variability and trends are higher in eastern and southern regions and lower in the north and northwestern regions.