Abstract
The elements associated with mineral aerosol particles exhibit, in the Western Mediterranean, sporadic but intense concentration peaks. Twenty dust events were recorded during a one-year sampling period with their frequency being maximum in spring and summer. Three-dimensional air-mass trajectories as well as satellite imagery (Meteosat II) show that all these events are associated with transport of soil dust from Africa. Three principal source-regions have been distinguished by using air-mass trajectories. Each of them seems to be characterized also by the chemical composition of the dust collected in Corsica. Moreover, the emissions and transport of dust particles from these various source-regions were found to occur during different times of the year. This has been explained by the seasonal atmospheric circulation patterns over North Africa and the Western Mediterranean.
Finally, total deposition measurements show that such dust transport events control a large fraction of the yearly atmospheric deposition of mineral aerosol particles to the Western Mediterranean. One single deposition event of short duration was found to account for 30% of the total annual flux for elements such as Si and Al.
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Bergametti, G., Gomes, L., Remoudaki, E., Desbois, M., Martin, D., Buat-Ménard, P. (1989). Present Transport and Deposition Patterns of African Dusts to the North-Western Mediterranean. In: Leinen, M., Sarnthein, M. (eds) Paleoclimatology and Paleometeorology: Modern and Past Patterns of Global Atmospheric Transport. NATO ASI Series, vol 282. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0995-3_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-0995-3_9
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