Classification of aerosol radiative properties during African desert dust intrusions over southeastern Spain by sector origins and cluster analysis

Abstract

The main goal of this study is to analyze the dependence of columnar aerosol optical and microphysical properties on source region and transport pathways during desert dust intrusions over Granada (Spain) from January 2005 to December 2010. Columnar aerosol properties have been derived from a non-spherical inversion code using the solar extinction measurements and sky radiances in the principal plane. Two classification methods of the African air masses ending at the study location were used by means of the HYSPLIT back-trajectories analysis. The first one, based on desert dust origin sources, discriminated the optical properties only for sector B (corresponding to western Sahara, northwest Mauritania and southwest Algeria). The particles present marked absorbing properties (low value of single scattering albedo at all wavelengths) during the desert dust events when the air masses were transported from sector A (north Morocco, northwest Algeria). This result may be related to the mixing of desert dust with anthropogenic pollutants from North African industrial areas in addition to the mixing with local anthropogenic aerosol and pollutants transported from European and Mediterranean areas. The second classification method was based on a statistics technique called cluster classification which allows grouping the air masses back trajectories with similar speed and direction of the trajectory. This method showed slight differences in the optical properties between the several transport pathways of air masses. High values of the aerosol optical depth and low mean values of the Angström parameter were associated with longer transport pathways over desert dust sources and slowly moving air masses. Both classification methods showed that the fine mode was mixed with coarse mode, being the fine mode fraction smaller than 55%.