Investigations on aerosols transport over micro- and macro-scale settings of West Africa

Abstract

The aerosol content dynamics in a virtual system were investigated. The outcome was extended to monitor the mean concentration diffusion of aerosols in a predefined macro and micro scale. The data set used were wind data set from the automatic weather station; satellite data set from Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer aerosol index and multi-angle imaging spectroradiometer; ground data set from Aerosol robotic network. The maximum speed of the macro scale (West Africa) was less than 4.4 m/s. This low speed enables the pollutants to acquire maximum range of about 15 km. The heterogeneous nature of aerosols layer in the West African atmosphere creates strange transport pattern caused by multiple refractivity. It is believed that the multiple refractive concepts inhibit aerosol optical depth data retrieval. It was also discovered that the build-up of the purported strange transport pattern with time has enormous potential to influence higher degrees of climatic change in the long term. Even when the African Easterly Jet drives the aerosols layer at about 10 m/s, the interacting layers of aerosols are compelled to mitigate its speed to about 4.2 m/s (macro scale level) and boost its speed to 30 m/s on the micro scale level. Mean concentration diffusion of aerosols was higher in the micro scale than the macro scale level. The minimum aerosol content dynamics for non-decaying, logarithmic decay and exponential decay particulates dispersion is given as 4, 1.4 and 0 respectively.