Disproving the Bodélé Depression as the Primary Source of Dust Fertilizing the Amazon Rainforest

Abstract

AbstractMotivated by the ongoing debates about the relative contribution of specific North African dust sources to the transatlantic dust transport to the Amazon Basin, the current study integrates a suite of satellite observations into a novel trajectory analysis framework to investigate dust transport from the leading two North African dust sources, namely, the Bodélé depression and El Djouf. In particular, this approach provides observation‐constrained quantification of the dust's dry and wet deposition along its transport pathways and is validated against multiple satellite observations. The current large ensemble trajectory simulations identify favorable transport pathways from the El Djouf across the Atlantic Ocean with respect to seasonal rain belts. The limited potential for long‐range transport of dust from the Bodélé depression is attributed to the currently identified extensive near‐source dust removal primarily by dry and wet deposition during boreal winter and summer, respectively.