Abstract. During the monsoon season, pollutants emitted by large coastal cities and
biomass burning plumes originating from central Africa have complex transport
pathways over southern West Africa (SWA). The
Dynamics–Aerosol–Chemistry–Cloud Interactions in West Africa (DACCIWA) field
campaign has provided numerous dynamical and chemical measurements in and
around the super-site of Savè in Benin (≈185 km away from the
coast), which allows quantification of the relative contribution of advected
pollutants. Through the combination of in situ ground measurements with
aircraft, radio-sounding, satellite, and high-resolution chemistry-transport
modeling with the CHIMERE model, the source attribution and transport
pathways of pollutants inland (here, NOx and CO) are
carefully analyzed for the 1–7 July 2016 period. The relative contributions
of different sources (i.e., emissions from several large coastal cities) to
the air quality in Savè are characterized. It is shown that a systematic
diurnal cycle exists with high surface concentrations of pollutants from
18:00 to 22:00 UTC. This evening peak is attributed to pollution transport
from the coastal city of Cotonou (Benin). Numerical model experiments
indicate that the anthropogenic pollutants are accumulated during the day
close to the coast and transported northward as soon as the daytime
convection in the atmospheric boundary layer ceases after 16:00 UTC,
reaching 8∘ N at 21:00 UTC. When significant biomass burning
pollutants are transported into continental SWA, they are mixed with
anthropogenic pollutants along the coast during the day, and this mixture is
then transported northward. At night, most of the coastal anthropogenic
plumes are transported within the planetary boundary layer (below about
500 m above ground level), whereas the biomass burning pollutants are mostly
transported above it, thus generally not impacting ground level air quality.