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Saharan dust and giant quartz particle transport towards Iceland

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...

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Autores principales: Varga, György, Dagsson-Waldhauserová, Pavla, Gresina, Fruzsina, Helgadottir, Agusta
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8178365/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34088966
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-91481-z
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author Varga, György
Dagsson-Waldhauserová, Pavla
Gresina, Fruzsina
Helgadottir, Agusta
author_facet Varga, György
Dagsson-Waldhauserová, Pavla
Gresina, Fruzsina
Helgadottir, Agusta
author_sort Varga, György
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-81783652021-06-08 Saharan dust and giant quartz particle transport towards Iceland Varga, György Dagsson-Waldhauserová, Pavla Gresina, Fruzsina Helgadottir, Agusta Sci Rep Article 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. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-06-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8178365/ /pubmed/34088966 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-91481-z Text en © The Author(s) 2021, corrected publication 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Varga, György
Dagsson-Waldhauserová, Pavla
Gresina, Fruzsina
Helgadottir, Agusta
Saharan dust and giant quartz particle transport towards Iceland
title Saharan dust and giant quartz particle transport towards Iceland
title_full Saharan dust and giant quartz particle transport towards Iceland
title_fullStr Saharan dust and giant quartz particle transport towards Iceland
title_full_unstemmed Saharan dust and giant quartz particle transport towards Iceland
title_short Saharan dust and giant quartz particle transport towards Iceland
title_sort saharan dust and giant quartz particle transport towards iceland
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8178365/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34088966
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-91481-z
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