The 7–13 March 2006 major Saharan outbreak: Multiproxy characterization of mineral dust deposited on the West African margin

Abstract

Mineral dust deposits were collected at Mbour, Senegal, throughout the spring of 2006 and especially during the well-documented March 7-13 large Saharan dust outbreak. During this 7-day period, significant changes in mass flux, grain-size, clay mineralogy and Sr and Nd isotopic compositions were recorded, indicating distinct provenances for the dust transported and deposited during and outside the event. All these terrigenous proxies, as well as freshwater diatom taxa, also showed significant temporal variations during the outbreak, implying contributions from at least two different provenance regions. Tri-dimensional back-trajectories and satellite imaging enabled us to link those distinct signatures to regions increasingly to the southeast within a large area covering Mauritania, Mali and southern Algeria, identified by the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) as the main source of the prominent winter/spring plume over the tropical Atlantic. The multiproxy characterization of the March 7-13 dust fall therefore enables us to typify the terrigenous signature of two different regions supplying dust off West Africa, and provide valuable clues for the interpretation of Northeastern Tropical Atlantic Ocean dust sedimentary records in terms of changes in provenance regions and transport systems. Additionally, because dust deposition data are scarce, flux and grain size data obtained in this study, among other parameters such as clay assemblages, provide important constraints for atmospheric transport models and dust deposition budget estimates in this area.