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Increased Shamal winds and dust activity over the Arabian Peninsula during the COVID-19 lockdown period in 2020
While anthropogenic pollutants have decreased during the lockdown imposed as an effort to contain the spread of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), changes in particulate matter (PM) do not necessarily exhibit the same tendency. This is the case for the eastern Arabian Peninsula, where in March...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8883805/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35251380 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aeolia.2022.100786 |
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author | Francis, Diana Fonseca, Ricardo Nelli, Narendra Teixido, Oriol Mohamed, Ruqaya Perry, Richard |
author_facet | Francis, Diana Fonseca, Ricardo Nelli, Narendra Teixido, Oriol Mohamed, Ruqaya Perry, Richard |
author_sort | Francis, Diana |
collection | PubMed |
description | While anthropogenic pollutants have decreased during the lockdown imposed as an effort to contain the spread of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), changes in particulate matter (PM) do not necessarily exhibit the same tendency. This is the case for the eastern Arabian Peninsula, where in March–June 2020, and with respect to the same period in 2016–2019, a 30 % increase in PM concentration is observed. A stronger than normal nocturnal low-level jet and subtropical jet over parts of Saudi Arabia, in response to anomalous convection over the tropical Indian Ocean, promoted enhanced and more frequent episodes of Shamal winds over the Arabian Peninsula. Increased surface winds associated with the downward mixing of momentum to the surface fostered, in turn, dust lifting and increased PM concentrations. The stronger low-level winds also favoured long-range transport of aerosols, changing the PM values downstream. The competing effects of reduced anthropogenic and increased dust concentrations leave a small positive signal (<5 W m(−2)) in the net surface radiation flux (R(net)), with the former dominating during daytime and the latter at night. However, in parts of the Arabian Gulf, Sea of Oman and Iran R(net) increased by >20 W m(−2) with respect to the baseline period, owing to a clearer environment and weaker winds. It is concluded that a reduction in anthropogenic emissions due to the lockdown does not necessarily go hand in hand with lower particulate matter concentrations. Therefore, emissions reduction strategies need to account for feedback effects in order to reach the planned long-term outcomes. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8883805 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-88838052022-02-28 Increased Shamal winds and dust activity over the Arabian Peninsula during the COVID-19 lockdown period in 2020 Francis, Diana Fonseca, Ricardo Nelli, Narendra Teixido, Oriol Mohamed, Ruqaya Perry, Richard Aeolian Res Article While anthropogenic pollutants have decreased during the lockdown imposed as an effort to contain the spread of the Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), changes in particulate matter (PM) do not necessarily exhibit the same tendency. This is the case for the eastern Arabian Peninsula, where in March–June 2020, and with respect to the same period in 2016–2019, a 30 % increase in PM concentration is observed. A stronger than normal nocturnal low-level jet and subtropical jet over parts of Saudi Arabia, in response to anomalous convection over the tropical Indian Ocean, promoted enhanced and more frequent episodes of Shamal winds over the Arabian Peninsula. Increased surface winds associated with the downward mixing of momentum to the surface fostered, in turn, dust lifting and increased PM concentrations. The stronger low-level winds also favoured long-range transport of aerosols, changing the PM values downstream. The competing effects of reduced anthropogenic and increased dust concentrations leave a small positive signal (<5 W m(−2)) in the net surface radiation flux (R(net)), with the former dominating during daytime and the latter at night. However, in parts of the Arabian Gulf, Sea of Oman and Iran R(net) increased by >20 W m(−2) with respect to the baseline period, owing to a clearer environment and weaker winds. It is concluded that a reduction in anthropogenic emissions due to the lockdown does not necessarily go hand in hand with lower particulate matter concentrations. Therefore, emissions reduction strategies need to account for feedback effects in order to reach the planned long-term outcomes. The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. 2022-03 2022-02-28 /pmc/articles/PMC8883805/ /pubmed/35251380 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aeolia.2022.100786 Text en © 2022 The Authors Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Francis, Diana Fonseca, Ricardo Nelli, Narendra Teixido, Oriol Mohamed, Ruqaya Perry, Richard Increased Shamal winds and dust activity over the Arabian Peninsula during the COVID-19 lockdown period in 2020 |
title | Increased Shamal winds and dust activity over the Arabian Peninsula during the COVID-19 lockdown period in 2020 |
title_full | Increased Shamal winds and dust activity over the Arabian Peninsula during the COVID-19 lockdown period in 2020 |
title_fullStr | Increased Shamal winds and dust activity over the Arabian Peninsula during the COVID-19 lockdown period in 2020 |
title_full_unstemmed | Increased Shamal winds and dust activity over the Arabian Peninsula during the COVID-19 lockdown period in 2020 |
title_short | Increased Shamal winds and dust activity over the Arabian Peninsula during the COVID-19 lockdown period in 2020 |
title_sort | increased shamal winds and dust activity over the arabian peninsula during the covid-19 lockdown period in 2020 |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8883805/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35251380 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.aeolia.2022.100786 |
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