Saharan dust and giant quartz particle transport towards Iceland

Abstract

Mineral dust emissions from Saharan sources have an impact on the atmospheric environment and sedimentary units in distant regions. Here, we present the first systematic observations of long-range Saharan dust transport towards Iceland. Fifteen Saharan dust episodes were identified to have occurred between 2008 and 2020 based on aerosol optical depth data, backward trajectories and numerical models. Icelandic samples from the local dust sources were compared with deposited dust from two severe Saharan dust events in terms of their granulometric and mineralogical characteristics. The episodes were associated with enhanced meridional atmospheric flow patterns driven by unusual meandering jets. Strong winds were able to carry large Saharan quartz particles (> 100 µm) towards Iceland. Our results confirm the atmospheric pathways of Saharan dust towards the Arctic, and identify new northward meridional long-ranged transport of giant dust particles from the Sahara, including the first evidence of their deposition in Iceland as previously predicted by models.

Improved Parameterization for the Size Distribution of Emitted Dust Aerosols Reduces Model Underestimation of Super Coarse Dust

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Because all these impacts depend sensitively on dust size , global aerosol models need to accurately represent the dust particle size distribution (PSD) to quantify the various dust impacts on the Earth system. Recent dust PSD measurements have indicated that super coarse (diameter >10 μm) dust particles are more prevalent than previously thought (Ryder et al, 2018(Ryder et al, , 2019 van der Does et al, 2018;Varga et al, 2021). Indeed, recent model estimates suggest an atmospheric load of ∼10 Tg of super coarse dust, which represents about a quarter of the total atmospheric loading of particulate matter and adds an estimated warming effect of around 0.10 W m −2 by absorbing both short-wave and long-wave radiation (

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Large-Scale Saharan Dust Episode in April 2019: Study of Desert Aerosol Loads over Sofia, Bulgaria, Using Remote Sensing, In Situ, and Modeling Resources

“…of South America. Thus, the picture of the Saharan dust spread during the period under consideration outlines a dust episode with exceptional strength and extent, significantly exceeding the heavy dust outbreaks typical for this period of the year [26,58,59].…”

“…These tremendous amounts of dust are transported by air circulation systems thousands of kilometers across the Atlantic to North and South America, as well as to Europe and the Middle East [13,[18][19][20][21][22][23]. A considerable part of these dust emissions crosses the Mediterranean and reaches mostly Southern and Central Europe, and less often the northern parts of the continent [10,13,[23][24][25][26].…”

“…In the second half of April 2019, an extreme massive large-scale Saharan dust episode was observed over the Mediterranean and Europe, spreading desert aerosols north to the polar region and west to the Caribbean [26,[58][59][60]. In this paper, we report results of studying and characterizing the manifestations of this episode in the atmosphere above Sofia, Bulgaria, in the period 22-26 April 2019, after the long-range transport of desert aerosols, using lidar and in situ measurements combined with satellite imagery and modeling data.…”

Soil dust aerosol in the atmosphere: sources, quantities, properties (overview)

“…Основными источниками почвенной пыли являются крупные засушливые районы мира: Африканский континент, особенно пустыня Сахара, Аравийский полуостров и Азия (восточные районы). Частицы почвенной пыли, возникшие в этих районах, могут переноситься на большие расстояния под действием сильных ветров и конвективных процессов ; van der Does et al, 2018; Yu et al, 2019;Varga et al, 2021).…”