Department of Environmental Sciences and Energy Research, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel, Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.
While fluxes of North African dust travelling over the Atlantic have significant influence on climate processes, biogeochemical cycles and human lives, there are still many open questions such as:
- Where exactly the dust is originating from and where does it sink?
- What is the dust flux and how well is it quantified?
- What is the frequency of emission of the North African dust sources?
Inhomogeneous spatial, vertical and temporal distribution of dust aerosol in the atmosphere and the location of dust sources in remote regions harden our ability to understand and quantify its exact role in climatic processes.
Focusing on the inter-annual patterns of dust loading and height we are trying to answer some of the open questions by studying the spatial and vertical distribution of dust over the ocean and by following dust plumes from source to sink.
In this talk I will discuss inter-annual patterns of North African dust height and loading over the Mid Atlantic Ocean and dust sink over the Amazon forest.