Monitoring the impact of desert dust outbreaks for air quality for health studies

Querol, Xavier; Tobías, Aurelio; Pérez, Noemí; Karanasiou, Angeliki; Amato, Fúlvio; Stafoggia, Massimo; García‐Pando, Carlos Pérez; Ginoux, Paul; Forastiére, Francesco; Gumy, Sophie; Mudu, Pierpaolo; Alastuey, Andrés

doi:10.1016/j.envint.2019.05.061

Cited by 172 publications

(129 citation statements)

References 193 publications

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“…Every year, approximately 1.2-1.8 Gt yr −1 of dust is released into the atmosphere reaching the medium and upper troposphere [1][2][3][4]. Of this, approximately 50.7% is transported from the Sahara to Europe [5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Orange Snow—A Saharan Dust Intrusion over Romania During Winter Conditions

et al. 2019

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On the morning of 23 March 2018, an unusual phenomenon was observed over Romania where the southeastern part of the country was covered in a fresh-layer of orange snow. The event was extensively reported in mass-media and social-media and raised questions about the origin and the possible impact of the orange snow. Even if this type of events, intrusions of Saharan dust, have been reported before in Romania, and in Europe in general, their occurrence during negative temperature conditions is very rare. Saharan dust intrusion occurs over Europe mainly during spring and, in general, is not accompanied by snow at low altitudes. In this article, for the first time, the synoptic-scale conditions leading to the Saharan dust intrusion over Romania and the chemical and physical properties of the deposited dust particles in a snow layer were analyzed. The Saharan dust event affected a permanent atmospheric measurement research infrastructure located southwest of Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. In-situ and remote sensing measurements conducted at this research infrastructure allowed the identification of the dust source as the north Sahara. The source was confirmed by the elemental ratios of the main components (e.g., Al, Ca, Mg, Fe, K). For example, the (Ca+Mg)/Fe ratio of 1.39 was characteristic for the north Sahara. The dust morphology and the minerals were analyzed by scanning electron microscopy with energy disperse X-ray spectrometry (SEM/EDX). The size distribution of the particle geometric diameter showed that they are centred on 1 μ m, but larger particles up to 40 μ m are also present. To visualize the minerals, an approach was developed which emphasized the presence of the calcite, quartz or clay minerals. The optical parameters of dust were measured by re-suspending the particles. Values of the optical parameters (i.e., asymmetry parameter at 550 nm was 0.604, single scattering albedo was 0.84–0.89) were similar to those measured for Saharan dust intrusions over the Iberian Peninsula. Also, the non-refractory particles found in the dust-contaminated snow layer were analyzed, indicating the presence of HULIS-like compounds, most probably advected from the Mediterranean sea.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Orange Snow—A Saharan Dust Intrusion over Romania During Winter Conditions

et al. 2019

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“…In addition, the mixed layer, caused by the vertical heat convection, is increasing that favours the intrusion of particulate matter from long-range transport. The atmospheric dust in the upper layer has the possibility of downward mixing [36,37]. The assessment of PM10 cannot be done with one criterion due to long-range transport of particles from North Africa.…”

Section: Pm10 Backgroundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Air Quality Trend of PM10. Statistical Models for Assessing the Air Quality Impact of Environmental Policies

et al. 2019

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A statistical modelling of PM10 concentration (2006–2015) is applied to understand the behaviour, to know the influence of the variables to exposure risk, to treat the missing data to evaluate air quality, and to estimate data for those sites where they are not available. The study area, Castellón region (Spain), is a strategic area in the framework of EU pollution control. A decrease of PM10 is observed for industrial and urban stations. In the case of rural stations, the levels remain constant throughout the study period. The contribution of anthropogenic sources has been estimated through the PM10 background of the study area. The behaviour of PM10 annual trend is tri-modal for industrial and urban stations and bi-modal in the case of rural stations. The EU Normative suggests that 90% of the data per year are necessary to control air quality. Thus, interpolation statistical methods are presented to fill missing data: Linear Interpolation, Exponential Interpolation, and Kalman Smoothing. This study also focuses on testing the goodness of these methods in order to find the ones that better approach the gaps. After analyzing graphically and using the RMSE the last method is confirmed to be the best option.

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“…One of the atmospheric processes widely affecting the Mediterranean Basin is air quality (Michaelides et al, 2018). Atmospheric particulate matter (PM) receives much public and scientific interest due to its significant environmental health risks (EEA, 2011;Díaz et al, 2017;Querol et al, 2019) and climatic effects. Specifically, the Mediterranean Basin is a perfect testbed for the study of atmospheric aerosols, since it presents an intense formation, accumulation and re-circulation of aerosols (Millán et al, 1997;Pérez et al, 2004;Querol et al, 2009;Ealo et al, 2016) from different sources as desert dust from the Sahara; sea salt; biomass burning from fires (especially in summer); particles with anthropogenic origin; and, eventually, volcanic ash.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Saharan Dust Modeling Over the Mediterranean Basin and Central Europe: Does the Resolution Matter?

et al. 2019

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The Mediterranean Basin is frequently affected by desert dust outbreaks coming from the north of Africa. The presence of this type of particulate matter (PM) joint to others (in particular, anthropogenic pollution from the intense human activities) makes the air quality over this region a worrying issue. In this sense, an accurate characterization of the dust transport is essential. This study tries to shed some light on the sensitivity of dust modeling to the spatial resolution by using the online integrated meteorological-chemical model (WRF-Chem). Three simulations only differing on spatial resolution (D1 at 1.32 • , D2 at 0.44 • and D3 at 0.11 •), during a representative omega-blocking situation over Europe causing Saharan dust transport over the Mediterranean and central Europe were evaluated against MODIS and AERONET. This evaluation revealed an improvement in the model AOD representation when resolution becomes finer, specially over the Saharan desert dust affected area. These discrepancies between resolutions could be attributed to changes both in thermodynamics and dynamics, since AOD is sensitive to aerosol mass, size distribution and water uptake. Relative humidity (RH) and PM-ratio (PM 2.5 /PM 10) present non-local differences due to the increase of the resolution as a consequence of changes in the long-range transport spatial pattern. Henceforth, the comparison of wind speed and direction, geopotencial height and sea level pressure (SLP) against ERA5 data shows a better representation of the dynamical patterns when decreasing spatial resolution.

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Monitoring the impact of desert dust outbreaks for air quality for health studies

Cited by 172 publications

References 193 publications

Orange Snow—A Saharan Dust Intrusion over Romania During Winter Conditions

Orange Snow—A Saharan Dust Intrusion over Romania During Winter Conditions

Air Quality Trend of PM10. Statistical Models for Assessing the Air Quality Impact of Environmental Policies

Saharan Dust Modeling Over the Mediterranean Basin and Central Europe: Does the Resolution Matter?

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