Largest Dust Source Research Articles

Active sand dunes are largest dust source in the Sahara Desert

Dried up lakebeds and playas in the Sahara Desert of North Africa are large sources of dust in the atmosphere. The Bodélé Depression at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, for example, is the single largest source of dust in the world; on average, 100 dust storms a year originate from the Bodélé Depression. A new study by Crouvi et al., however, finds that active sand dunes could be even bigger sources of desert dust in the atmosphere. Atmospheric dust plays active roles in climate and biological processes in the ocean: It regulates heating at the surface of the Earth; modifies cloud properties that affect rainfall; and acts as the only source of iron, a critical nutrient for microorganisms in the ocean. Little is known about types of dust sources in the Sahara Desert, which alone accounts for more than 50% of the dust in the atmosphere.

Contemporary glacigenic inputs to the dust cycle

ABSTRACTThe importance of glacigenic dust in the Earth's system during glacial periods is widely acknowledged. Under contemporary conditions, the world's largest dust sources are in low‐lying, hot, arid regions and this is where most aeolian research is focused. However the processes of dust production and emissions are still operating in cold climate regions, particularly in proglacial areas. This paper assesses current understanding of the relationship between glacierised landscapes and dust emissions and inputs to the global dust cycle. It focuses on how elements in the glacial and aeolian geomorphic sub‐systems interact to determine the magnitude, frequency and timing of aeolian dust emissions, and on feedback mechanisms between the systems. Where they have been measured, dust emission intensity and deposition rates in glacierised catchments are very high, in some cases far exceeding those in lower latitudes, however, few studies span long time scales. The impact of future glacier retreat on the balance between sediment supply, availability and aeolian transport capacity and implications for glacigenic dust emissions is also considered. This balance depends on relative spatial and temporal changes in meltwater suspended sediment concentration and wind strengths, which promote dust emissions, and patterns and rates of soil development and vegetation succession on recently‐deglaciated terrain which protect sediments from deflation. Retreat of the Antarctic ice sheet could mean that in future glacigenic contributions to the dust cycle exceed those of non‐glacigenic sources in the southern hemisphere. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Mineral Dust Cycle in EMAC 2.40: sensitivity to the spectral resolution and the dust emission scheme

Abstract. This first detailed analysis of the mineral dust cycle in the ECHAM5/MESSy Atmospheric Chemistry (EMAC) model system investigates the performance of two dust emission schemes, following the approach of Balkanski et al. (2004) and Tegen et al. (2002), respectively, and the influence of the horizontal model resolution. Here the spectral resolutions T42, T63, T85, and T106 are investigated. A basic sulphur chemistry, enabling the coating of insoluble dust particles to make them soluble, is employed in order to realistically describe the ageing and wet deposition of mineral dust. Independent of the dust emission scheme the five-year simulations with the horizontal resolutions T42 and T63 produce unrealistically high emissions at some grid points in the Tarim Basin in Central Asia, leading to very high dust loads in polar regions. With these coarse resolutions, dust source grid points in the basin and elevated grid points of the Himalayas with high wind speeds cannot be distinguished, causing this overestimation. In T85 and T106 these regions are well separated and considerably less dust is emitted there. With the chosen model setup, the dust emission scheme by Balkanski et al. (2004) places the global maximum of emissions in the Thar Desert in India. This is unrealistic as the Sahara Desert is known to be the largest dust source in the world. This is the main deficiency of this scheme compared to the one by Tegen et al. (2002), which, based on a qualitative comparison to AEROCOM data, produces a very reasonable distribution of emissions and dust loads in simulations with resolutions T85 and T106. For future climate simulations with EMAC focusing on mineral dust, we recommend to use the dust emission scheme by Tegen et al. (2002) and a model resolution of at least T85. Simulations of two selected episodes and comparison to observational data sets show that in this model configuration EMAC is able to realistically simulate also intense, episodic events of dust emission and long-range transport.

Dynamical mechanisms controlling the vertical redistribution of dust and the thermodynamic structure of the West Saharan atmospheric boundary layer during summer

AbstractThe Saharan atmospheric boundary layer (SABL) plays a significant role in the atmospheric global circulation and directly affects the vertical redistribution of dust originated in the Sahara, the world's largest dust source. Recent measurements have revealed a variety of new dynamical mechanisms that control the structure of the SABL, which are responsible for exchange between the Saharan convective and residual boundary layers. Using new space‐borne laser remote sensing data (CALIPSO) and recently published results, we provide an overview of the following known dynamical mechanisms: diurnal vertical mixing, dynamical lifting (density currents and cold air outbreaks) and topographic effects (mountains and albedo anomalies). Copyright © 2009 Royal Meteorological Society

Dust mobilization due to density currents in the Atlas region: Observations from the Saharan Mineral Dust Experiment 2006 field campaign

Evaporation of precipitation is a ubiquitous feature of dry and hot desert environments. The resulting cooling often generates density currents with strong turbulent winds along their leading edges, which can mobilize large amounts of dust. Mountains support this process by triggering convection, by downslope acceleration of the cool air, and by fostering the accumulation of fine‐grained sediments along their foothills through the action of water. For the Sahara, the world's largest dust source, this mechanism has been little studied because of the lack of sufficiently high resolution observational data. The present study demonstrates the frequent occurrence of density currents along the Sahara side of the Atlas Mountain chain in southern Morocco using the unique data set collected during the Saharan Mineral Dust Experiment (SAMUM) field campaign in May/June 2006. The density currents are related to convection over the mountains in the afternoon hours and have lifetimes on the order of 10 h. The passage of the sharp leading edge that sometimes reaches several hundred kilometers in length is usually associated with a marked increase in dew point and wind speed, a change in wind direction, and a decrease in temperature and visibility due to suspended dust. It is conceivable that this mechanism is relevant for other mountainous regions in northern Africa during the warm season. This would imply that simulations of the dust cycle with numerical models need a reliable representation of moist convective processes in order to generate realistic dust emissions from the Sahara.

Meteorological causes of Harmattan dust in West Africa

We investigated the temporal dynamics of dust entrainment in the Bodélé Depression, Central Sahara, to better understand the intra-annual variability of aerosol emission in the world's largest dust source. The linkages between dust entrainment and large-scale meteorological factors were examined by correlating several meteorological variables in the Mediterranean and Africa north of the equator with the aerosol concentrations in the Bodélé Depression separately for winter and summer. The methodological tools applied are NCEP/NCAR reanalysis data and the aerosol index of the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS-AI), available for 15 years from 1978 to 1993. We found that dust mobilisation during the Harmattan season is highly dependent on air pressure variability in the Mediterranean area. High pressure to the north of the Bodélé intensifies the NE trade winds, leading to an increased entrainment of dust in the Bodélé Depression. In summer, dust mobilization cannot be explained by the large scale meteorological conditions. This highlights the importance of local to regional wind systems linked to the northernmost position of the intertropical convection zone (ITCZ) during this time.

Links between topography, wind, deflation, lakes and dust: The case of the Bodélé Depression, Chad

The Bodélé Depression, Chad is the planet's largest single source of dust. Deflation from the Bodélé could be seen as a simple coincidence of two key prerequisites: strong surface winds and a large source of suitable sediment. But here we hypothesise that long term links between topography, winds, deflation and dust ensure the maintenance of the dust source such that these two apparently coincidental key ingredients are connected by land‐atmosphere processes with topography acting as the overall controlling agent. We use a variety of observational and numerical techniques, including a regional climate model, to show that: 1) contemporary deflation from the Bodélé is delineated by topography and a surface wind stress maximum; 2) the Tibesti and Ennedi mountains play a key role in the generation of the erosive winds in the form of the Bodélé Low Level Jet (LLJ); 3) enhanced deflation from a stronger Bodélé LLJ during drier phases, for example, the Last Glacial Maximum, was probably sufficient to create the shallow lake in which diatoms lived during wetter phases, such as the Holocene pluvial. Winds may therefore have helped to create the depression in which erodible diatom material accumulated. Instead of a simple coincidence of nature, dust from the world's largest source may result from the operation of long term processes on paleo timescales which have led to ideal conditions for dust generation in the world's largest dust source. Similar processes plausibly operate in other dust hotspots in topographic depressions.

Atmospheric controls on mineral dust emission from the Bodélé Depression, Chad: The role of the low level jet

Atmospheric aerosols play an important though uncertain role in the Earth's climate system. The Bodélé Depression in Chad stands out as the planet's largest source of dust, yet very little is known about the atmospheric circulation that maintain this source. We investigate what key large‐scale features of the circulation over the Bodélé account for its primacy as a mineral aerosol source. We show, for the first time, the structure and characteristics of the Bodélé Low Level Jet (LLJ) which has a maximum speed near 18°N, 19°E at 925 hPa. It is strongest in the northern winter, receding with the advance of summer in phase with dustiness in the Bodélé. Variability of dust over the Bodélé occurs contemporaneously with the ridging of the Libyan High and pulsing of the pressure gradient which drives the northeasterlies in which the LLJ is embedded.