Aerosol transport over the western Mediterranean basin: Evidence of the contribution of fine particles to desert dust plumes over Alborán Island
Identificadores
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10481/47097DOI: 10.1002/2014JD022044
ISSN: 2169-8996
ISSN: 2169-897X
Metadatos
Mostrar el registro completo del ítemAutor
Valenzuela, A.; Olmo Reyes, Francisco José; Granados Muñoz, María José; Antón, Manuel; Guerrero Rascado, Juan Luis; Quirantes Sierra, Arturo; Toledano, Carlos; Pérez Ramírez, Daniel; Alados Arboledas, LucasEditorial
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
Materia
Aerosol property Alborán Island Mineral dust Mediterranean Desert Air masses Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS)
Fecha
2014-12-27Referencia bibliográfica
Valenzuela, A.; et al. Aerosol transport over the western Mediterranean basin: Evidence of the contribution of fine particles to desert dust plumes over Alborán Island. Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, 119(24): 14028-14044 (2014). [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/47097]
Patrocinador
This work was supported by the Andalusia Regional Government through projects P12-RNM-2409 and P10-RNM-6299, by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology through projects CGL2010-18782 and CGL2013-45410-R, by the EU through ACTRIS project (EU INFRA-2010-1.1.16-262254), and by the University of Granada through the contract “Plan Propio. Programa 9. Convocatoria 2013.” CIMEL Calibration was performed at the AERONET-EUROPE calibration center (http://aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov), supported by ACTRIS (European Union Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement 262254). Granados-Muñoz was funded under grant AP2009-0552. ALFA database computation was partly supported by RES (Spanish Supercomputation Network) computing resources (projects AECT-2009-1-0012 and AECT-2011-3-0016).Resumen
Eight months (June 2011 to January 2012) of aerosol property data were obtained at the remote site of Alborán Island (35.95°N, 3.03°W) in the western Mediterranean basin. The aim of this work is to assess the aerosol properties according to air mass origin and transport over this remote station with a special focus on air mass transport from North Africa. For air masses coming from North Africa, different aerosol properties showed strong contributions from mineral dust lifted from desert areas. Nevertheless, during these desert dust intrusions, some atmospheric aerosol properties are clearly different from pure mineral dust particles. Thus, Angström exponent α(440–870) presents larger values than those reported for pure desert dust measured close to dust source regions. These results combine with α(440, 670) − α(670, 870) ≥ 0.1 and low single scattering albedo (ω(λ)) values, especially at the largest wavelengths. Most of the desert dust intrusions over Alborán can be described as a mixture of dust and anthropogenic particles. The analyses support that our results apply to North Africa desert dust air masses transported from different source areas. Therefore, our results indicate a significant contribution of fine absorbing particles during desert dust intrusions over Alborán arriving from different source regions. The aerosol optical depth data retrieved from Sun photometer measurements have been used to check Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer retrievals, and they show reasonable agreement, especially for North African air masses.