Long‐range transport of North African dust to the eastern United States

Natural Background Visibility and Regional Haze Goals in the Southeastern United States

“…In contrast, the period of impact at the Virgin Islands covered the 9 months from February through October. As a result, Perry et al 64 found the annual mean fine soil concentration at the Virgin Islands was 3.25 g/m 3 versus values in the vicinity of 1 g/m 3 that were given earlier for the Southeast, and the summertime fine soil concentrations there were a substantial 7.58 g/m 3 , about four times as large as the highest concentrations in the VISTAS region. From 23 years of measurements of the composition of PM transported over the Atlantic Ocean onto the coast at Miami, the mean concentration of soil dust in total suspended particulates during onshore flow was 4.72 g/ m 3 .…”

Long-range transport of mineral dust in the global atmosphere: Impact of African dust on the environment of the southeastern United States

“…As previously stated, African dust has a remarkably uniform mineralogical and elemental composition. In contrast, locally or regionally derived dusts in the eastern United States appear to have distinctly different characteristics and a much more variable composition, as suggested by the studies of elemental composition (9,(43)(44)48).…”

“…The temporal and geographical extent of African dust transport to the United States is nicely depicted by Perry et al (43), who studied PM 2.5 soil dust particle concentrations (based on the measured concentration of Al, Ca, Fe, Si, and Ti in twice-weekly daily samples) in a network of approximately 70 sites located in national parks and wilderness areas during the period 1992-1995. They observed that the highest individual PM 2.5 soil concentrations were associated with sites in the eastern United States during the summer, not in the arid southwest, as one might expect.…”

Long-range transatlantic transport of microorganisms in clouds of African desert dust: a study of atmospheric microbiology, chemistry, and the influence of desert dust on surface water microbial ecology aboard the R/V JOIDES Resolution, IODP Expedition 336, 16 September–16 November 2011

“…Compared to the overall trend in dust deposition noted in the Caribbean, some of the highest deposition rates have corresponded with major ENSO events (Prospero and Nees, 1986;Prospero and Lamb, 2003;Shinn et al, 2003). Although dust transport out of North Africa may move north into the North Atlantic and Europe and northwest into the Middle East at various times of the year, the most consistent transport is across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and Americas (Perry et al, 1997). Transatlantic dust transport generally occurs between latitudes 15° and 25°N (Graham and Duce, 1979).…”

“…A majority (50%-75%) of this quantity is believed to originate from the Sahara and Sahel Deserts in North Africa (Moulin et al, 1997;Perry et al, 1997;Goudie and Middleton, 2001;Prospero and Lamb, 2003). In general, high-energy storm activities over deserts and other arid regions can mobilize significant quantities of soil into the atmosphere (Gillies et al, 1996;Qian et al, 2002).…”