Multi-sectoral impact assessment of an extreme African dust episode in the Eastern Mediterranean in March 2018

Monteiro, Alexandra; Basart, Sara; Kazadzis, Stelios; Gkikas, Antonis; Vandenbussche, Sophie; Tobías, Aurelio; Gama, Carla; García‐Pando, Carlos Pérez; Tarradellas, Enric; Notas, George; Middleton, Nick; Kushta, Jonilda; Amiridis, Vassilis; Lagouvardos, K.; Kosmopoulos, Panagiotis; Kotroni, V.; Kanakidou, Maria; Mihalopoulos, Nikos; Kalivitis, Nikos; Dagsson-Waldhauserová, Pavla; El-Askary, H. M.; Sievers, Klaus; Giannaros, Theodore M.; Mona, Lucia; Hirtl, Marcus; Skomorowski, P.; Ničković, Slobodan; Votsis, Athanasios; Virtanen, Timo; Christoudias, T.; Mauro, Biagio Di; Trippetta, Serena; Kutuzov, Stanislav; Meinander, Outi

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.156861

Cited by 35 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 68 publications

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“…precipitation deficit served as the preconditions for the burning of the available fuel and then convert into massive wildfires. In Giannaros et al (2022), the authors found that warmer than average temperatures and lack of precipitation catering to the two prolonged (greater than 10 days) heat waves led to efficient drying of the fuel until the ignition time creating a highly flammable fuel. Also, the hot and dry atmospheric layer near the surface helps in maintaining intense burning as well as up-thrust of the plume.…”

Section: Description Of the Eventmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They show that Saharan dust layers arrive above Greece in altitudes between 2-6 km in spring (mean dust extinction coefficient values ∼ 70 Mm −1 ), between 3-6 km in summer (∼ 50 Mm −1 ), and between 2-5 km in autumn (∼ 40 Mm −1 ). Saharan dust effects in various sectors including health, aviation and solar energy have been presented in Monteiro et al (2022) and references therein. Especially, studies estimating extreme dust events can result in Global Horizontal Irradiance (GHI) attenuation by as much as 40-50 % and a much stronger Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI) decrease (80-90 %), while spectrally this attenuation is distributed to 37 % in the UV region, 33 % in the visible and around 30 % in the infrared (Kosmopoulos et al, 2017).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…The study by Founda et al (2022) showed that the heat wave of 2021 was intense and persistent with the highest observed nighttime temperatures and cumulative heat which were also intensified due to urban heat island effect in Athens. A study of the Varympompi wildfire of 2021 in the northern suburbs of Athens by Giannaros et al (2022) showed that it was characterized by unusual spread of fire followed by massive spotting as well as pyroconvection influence. This study analysed the physical drivers associated with this event using fire-atmosphere modeling system coupled with WRF-Fire and the relative contributions of weather, topography and fuels.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Investigation of the effects of the Greek extreme wildfires of August 2021 on air quality and spectral solar irradiance

Masoom

Fountoulakis²,

Kazadzis³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Abstract. In August 2021, a historic heatwave was recorded in Greece which resulted in extreme wildfire events that strongly affected the air quality over the city of Athens. Saharan dust was also transferred over Greece in the same period due to the prevailing southern winds. The impact of these events on air quality and surface solar radiation are investigated in this study. Event characterization based on active and passive remote sensing instrumentation has been performed. The study shows that significantly increased levels of air pollution were recorded during the end of July/first week of August. The smoke led to unusually high AOD values (up to 3.6), high Ångström Exponent (AE) (up to 2.4) and a strong and negative dependence of single scattering albedo (SSA) on wavelength that was observed to decrease from 0.93 at 440 nm to 0.86 at 1020 nm signifying the presence of strong absorbing aerosols. While, the dust event led to high AOD (up to 1.4), low AE (up to 0.9) and positive dependence of SSA on wavelength that was observed to increase from 0.89 at 440 nm to 0.95 at 1020 nm indicating large forward scattering due to coarse particles. Furthermore, the analysis of the smoke aerosol optical properties during the transfer from the source to a distance of about 240 km revealed that the SSA and AE changed significantly during the transfer, which lasted approximately 9 h. The transport of the plume led to an impressive change in the spectral shape of SSA whose value significantly increased pointing to the aging of smoke and the dilution of plumes while the transport. The impact of dust and smoke on spectral solar irradiance reveals significant differences in the spectral shape of attenuation caused by the two different aerosol species. The attenuation of solar irradiance in UV-B irradiance was found to be least in case of dust and highest due to smoke (up to 60 % or more) and intermediate in the case of a mixture of smoke and dust. The attenuation was comparatively less in NIR region (mostly within 20 % but it even reached up to 40 % in the presence of smoke) and VIS region (but greater than NIR region). Also, the AOD variations from climatology led to decrease in UV Index up to 53 %, in vitamin-D up to 50 %, in photosynthetically active radiation up to 21 % and in GHI up to 17 %, with implications on health, agriculture and energy. This study highlights the wider impacts of wildfires that are part of the wider problem of the Mediterranean countries, whose frequency is predicted to increase in view of the projected increasing occurrence of summer heatwaves.

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Section: Description Of the Eventmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Investigation of the effects of the Greek extreme wildfires of August 2021 on air quality and spectral solar irradiance

Masoom

Fountoulakis²,

Kazadzis³

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…Dust can also interact with air pollutants by acting as a catalyzer and providing a surface for heterogeneous reactions (Cwiertny et al, 2008;Ndour et al, 2008). Finally, dust might negatively impact human health (Querol et al, 2019;Pérez García-Pando et al, 2014;Giannadaki et al, 2014), induce a decrease in solar energy yield by dust deposition to solar panels (Piedra and Moosmüller, 2017), and negatively impact aircraft operations due to reduced visibility (Middleton, 2017;Monteiro et al, 2022). Most of these processes rely not only on the total mass of dust but also on its microphysical properties and composition (Mahowald et al, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Insights into the single particle composition, size, mixing state and aspect ratio of freshly emitted mineral dust from field measurements in the Moroccan Sahara using electron microscopy

Pańta

Kandler

Alastuey

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Abstract. The chemical and morphological properties of mineral dust aerosols emitted by wind erosion from arid and semi-arid regions influence climate, ocean and land ecosystems, air quality, and multiple socio-economic sectors. However, there is an incomplete understanding of the emitted dust particle size distribution (PSD) in terms of its constituent minerals that typically result from the fragmentation of soil aggregates during wind erosion. The emitted dust PSD affects the duration of particle transport and thus each mineral’s global distribution, along with its specific effect upon climate. This lack of understanding is largely due to the scarcity of relevant in situ measurements in dust sources. To advance our understanding of the physicochemical properties of the emitted dust PSD, we present insights into the elemental composition and morphology of individual dust particles collected during the FRontiers in dust minerAloGical coMposition and its Effects upoN climaTe (FRAGMENT) field campaign in the Moroccan Sahara in September 2019. We analyzed more than 300,000 freshly emitted individual particles by performing offline analysis in the laboratory using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) coupled with Energy-Dispersive X-ray Spectrometry (EDX). Eight major particle-type classes were identified where clay minerals make up the majority of the analyzed particles by number, with carbonates and quartz contributing to a lesser extent. We provide an exhaustive analysis of the size distribution and potential mixing state of different particle types, focusing largely on iron-rich (Fe-oxi/hydroxides) and feldspar particles, which are key to the effects of dust upon radiation and clouds. Nearly pure or externally mixed Fe-oxi/hydroxides are present only in diameters smaller than 2 µm and mainly below 1 µm. Fe-oxi/hydroxides tend to be increasingly internally mixed with other minerals, especially clays, as particle size increases, i.e., the volume fraction of Fe-oxi/hydroxides in aggregates decreases with particle size. Pure (externally-mixed) feldspar grains represented 3.7 % of all the particles, of which we estimated about a quarter to be K-feldspar. The externally-mixed total feldspar and K-feldspar abundances are relatively invariant with particle size, in contrast to the increasing abundance of feldspar-like (internally-mixed) aggregates with particle size. We also found that overall the median aspect ratio is rather constant across particle size and mineral groups, although we obtain slightly higher aspect ratios for internally-mixed particles. The detailed information on the composition of freshly emitted individual dust particles along with the quantitative analysis of their mixing state presented here can be used to constrain climate models including mineral species in their representation of the dust cycle.

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“…During episodes of Saharan dust storms that affect Europe, there is substantial evidence of the windblown desert dust's association with mortality and morbidity [8][9][10][11] . Apart from devastating health impacts, dust also impacts the environment, transport, and infrastructure [12][13][14] . Monetizing these impacts can translate to hundreds of million dollars just from a single dust storm 13 .…”

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confidence: 99%

Stratospheric impacts on dust transport and air pollution in West Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean

et al. 2022

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Saharan dust intrusions strongly impact Atlantic and Mediterranean coastal regions. Today, most operational dust forecasts extend only 2–5 days. Here we show that on timescales of weeks to months, North African dust emission and transport are impacted by sudden stratospheric warmings (SSWs), which establish a negative North Atlantic Oscillation-like surface signal. Chemical transport models show a large-scale dipolar dust response to SSWs, with the burden in the Eastern Mediterranean enhanced up to 30% and a corresponding reduction in West Africa. Observations of inhalable particulate (PM10) concentrations and aerosol optical depth confirm this dipole. On average, a single SSW causes 680–2460 additional premature deaths in the Eastern Mediterranean and prevents 1180–2040 premature deaths in West Africa from exposure to dust-source fine particulate (PM2.5). Currently, SSWs are predictable 1–2 weeks in advance. Altogether, the stratosphere represents an important source of subseasonal predictability for air quality over West Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean.

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Multi-sectoral impact assessment of an extreme African dust episode in the Eastern Mediterranean in March 2018

Cited by 35 publications

References 68 publications

Investigation of the effects of the Greek extreme wildfires of August 2021 on air quality and spectral solar irradiance

Investigation of the effects of the Greek extreme wildfires of August 2021 on air quality and spectral solar irradiance

Insights into the single particle composition, size, mixing state and aspect ratio of freshly emitted mineral dust from field measurements in the Moroccan Sahara using electron microscopy

Stratospheric impacts on dust transport and air pollution in West Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean

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