An investigation of the dynamical and physico-chemical features of desert aerosol over west africal and eastern atlantic

摘要

The possible strong climatic influence of mineral aerosol (almost 1 gigaton of desert dust annually mobilized by wind erosion from the arid or semi-arid areas of Northern Africa is transported toward Mediterranean or Atlantic basins) encourages to develop mesoscale modeling description of all the aspects of the dust life cycle: wind uptake, transport, removal, direct or indirect radiative forcing. This poster deals with a mesoscale description of some of these questions. We have simulated a dust outbreak over Atlantic (at the beginning of May 1997) with the mesoscale model RAMS (Regional ATmospheric Modelign System). The main aspects addressed here are (i) dynamics: checking of dust trajectories using satellite imagery and (ii) an attempt to assess the radiative response using local surface measurements (at Sal Island, Cabo Verde).