Can Volcanic Dust Suspended From Surface Soil and Deserts of Iceland Be Transferred to Central Balkan Similarly to African Dust (Sahara)?

Dragana Đorđević,Pavla Dagsson-Waldhauserová,David C Finger,Srđan Petrović,Ivana Tošić,Sanja Sakan,Jelena Đuričić-Milanković

doi:10.3389/feart.2019.00142

Abstract

In this work we use chemical fingerprints as characteristics ratios of specific crustal elements Ca/Al, Fe/Al, K/Al, Mg/Al, Mn/Al, Ca/Fe and Mg/Fe to investigate the long-range transport of volcanic aerosols which are entering the atmosphere in suspended and resuspended processes from Icelandic deserts and hot spots in remote areas in Iceland and transmitted to the central Balkan area (Belgrade). For this purpose, backward trajectories from Belgrade (=44°48’; =20°28’) in 2012 and 2013, simultaneous with atmospheric aerosols measurements, were calculated by using the Hybrid Single-Particle Lagrangian Integrated Trajectory (HYSPLIT) model. We found that about 17% of air masses passed over Icelandic territory and arrived to Balkan area. In almost all of these episodes ratios of some investigated elements in suburban aerosols of Balkan area corresponded to the ratios of elements investigated in surface soil of the Rangárvellir area - South Iceland in the vicinity of volcanoes. We identified several episodes, such as 6 – 8 August 2012, 2 – 6 June 2013, 26 – 28 June 2013, and 18 – 20 September 2013, with the characteristic ratios of the highest number of investigated elements in atmospheric aerosol of central Balkan corresponding to ratios from Icelandic soil material. This study provides evidence that Icelandic dust can travel long distances showing the importance of High Latitude Dust sources.

Highlights

Charles Darwin described the phenomenon he noticed on the sailboat Beagle that the deck and all the equipment were covered with fine dust in the nineteenth century
In the near past there are some works relate to the atmospheric transport of Icelandic volcanic ash during eruption of Eyjafjallajökull (Langmann et al, 2012) as well as volcanic dusts during storm events (Dagsson-Waldhauserova et al, 2015; Taylor et al, 2015; Wilkins et al, 2016) but there are not yet sufficiently investigations relate to volcanic particles in atmospheric aerosols originated from dust storms occurrences in Iceland over continental part of Europe
In this work we considered elements Al, Ca, Fe, K, Na, Mg, and Mn and their characteristic ratios as fingerprints for Icelandic volcanic dust in suburban atmospheric aerosols of central Balkan

Summary

Introduction

Charles Darwin described the phenomenon he noticed on the sailboat Beagle that the deck and all the equipment were covered with fine dust in the nineteenth century. Dust particles with aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 μm, which mostly contain long-range transport, directly affect human and animal health because they smoothly penetrate the lungs and sensitive alveolar system causing various inflammatory processes, asthma and obstructive pulmonary disease (Prospero et al, 2008; De Longueville et al, 2010) This phenomenon of longrange dust transport is generally present, it is necessary to point out that North Africa, more precisely the Sahara, is the largest source of mineral dust, with about 0.8 × 109 tons per year, contributing with 20–70% of global mineral dust (Laurent et al, 2008). In the Sahara region, air currents lead to dust build-ups, which are transported to the Mediterranean (Rodríguez et al, 2003; Querol et al, 2004) and further north to Arctic regions or west to the Atlantic and there by long-range transport all away across the ocean to the coast of America

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