Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Arabian Journal of Geosciences (2022) 15:1613 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-022-10895-9 ORIGINAL PAPER Modeling the impact of wind shear on aerosol for flood prevention and drought monitoring over Ethiopia Megbar Wondie 1  · Azmeraw Alene 2  · Yesgat Enawgaw 3 Received: 6 April 2022 / Accepted: 2 October 2022 © Saudi Society for Geosciences 2022 Abstract Extreme climate events such as heavy rain and drought occur frequently over Ethiopia because of natural and man-made phenomena, even though modeling based on vertical wind shear (VWS) to regulate aerosol for cloud formation is quite useful for accurate estimation of climate extremes. However, there are no previous studies of flood and drought based on aerosol and wind shear in Ethiopia. Therefore, this paper is aimed at modeling the impact of wind shear on aerosol for flood prevention and drought monitoring over Ethiopia. To this end, the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecast (ECMWF) reanalysis and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data from 2000 to 2019 (20 years) are analyzed. Aerosol optical depth (AOD) and Angstrom exponent (AE) models are applied to estimate aerosol concentration and sizes. The results indicated that the mean values of VWS for two seasons, spring and summer, were 0.5 (pa/s) and 0.3 (pa/s), respectively. The strong VWS negatively correlated to cloud cover and led to drought occurrences, whereas aerosol and cloud cover were positively correlated during weak VWS at the small-size aerosol. Owing to this, moderate VWS and high AOD lead to the occurrence of floods in Ethiopia. Moreover, the southwest and northwest parts of Ethiopia are covered with strong clouds due to the availability of atmospheric moisture and the local aerosol. In summer, most parts of Ethiopia are covered by strong cloud because of weak VWS and smoke aerosols. In the Ethiopian context, there is very small fin anthropogenic aerosol during the study period, while 5% and 1% of mixed aerosol are found during spring and summer sea- sons respectively. Besides this, 93% and 99% of dust aerosols are found during the spring and summer seasons, respectively. Hence, future study is quite useful to forecast the long-term climate by consideration of VWS on the regulation of aerosol to cloud formation for drought monitoring over Ethiopia. Keywords Aerosol Angstrom · Aerosol optical depth · Cloud · Vertical wind shear Introduction Ethiopia is working hard on rain-fed agriculture; even though it has a poor strategy for adapting and mitigating climate change (Viste and Sorteberg 2012; Bekele et al. 2016; Abebe 2017; Asfaw et al. 2018). This is because of the natural and man-made sources in the air, and the dif- ferent shapes and sizes of the geographic location have changed the precipitation and temperature patterns (Asfaw et al. 2018). Furthermore, the depletion of natural resources and biodiversity has accelerated social poverty in a changing landscape. Indeed, Ethiopia has dynamic landscapes with associated different atmospheric parameters such as aerosol concentration and vertical wind shear (VWS) that are not included in the climate model yet. Hence, it does not have the right methods to deal with climate change (Korecha and Barnston 2007; Segele 2009; Kalim and Gao 2012). Responsible Editor: Zhihua Zhang * Megbar Wondie megbar.radiation05@gmail.com 1 Atmospheric Physics and Radar Meteorology Research Division at, Choke Mountain Research Institute, Debre Markos University, Debre Markos, Ethiopia 2 Department of Physics, College of Natural and Computational Science, Jimma University, Jimma, Ethiopia 3 Department of Physics, College of Natural and Computational Science, Debre Markos University, Debre Markos, Ethiopia