3D Structure of Saharan Dust Transport Towards Europe as Seen by CALIPSO

Abstract

We present a 3D multi-year monthly mean climatology of Saharan dust advection over Europe using an area-optimized pure dust CALIPSO product. The product has been developed by applying EARLINET-measured dust lidar ratios and depolarization-based dust discrimination methods and it is shown to have a very good agreement in terms of AOD when compared to AERONET over Europe/North Africa and MODIS over Mediterranean. The processing of such purely observational data reveals the certain seasonal patterns of dust transportation towards Europe and the Atlantic Ocean. The physical and optical properties of the dust layer are identified for several areas near the Saharan sources, over the Mediterranean and over continental Europe.