Observing Mineral Dust in Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Europe: Current Capabilities and Challenges ahead for the Development of Dust Services.

Lucia Mona, Vassilis Amiridis, Emilio Cuevas, Antonis Gkikas, Serena Trippetta,
Sophie Vandenbussche, Angela Benedetti, Pavla Dagsson-Waldhauserova,
Paola Formenti, Alexander Haefele, Stelios Kazadzis, Peter Knippertz,
Benoit Laurent, Fabio Madonna, Slobodan Nickovic, Nikolaos Papagiannopoulos,
Gelsomina Pappalardo, Carlos Pérez García-Pando, Thomas Popp, Sergio Rodríguez,
Andrea Sealy, Nobuo Sugimoto, Enric Terradellas, Ana Vukovic Vimic,
Bernadette Weinzierl, and Sara Basart

Online Publication: 13 Dec 2023
Print Publication: 01 Dec 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-23-0005.1
Page(s): E2223–E2264

ABSTRACT:

Mineral dust produced by wind erosion of arid and semiarid surfaces is a major component of atmospheric aerosol that affects climate, weather, ecosystems, and socioeconomic sectors such as human health, transportation, solar energy, and air quality. Understanding these effects and ultimately improving the resilience of affected countries requires a reliable, dense, and diverse set of dust observations, fundamental for the development and the provision of skillful dust-forecast-tailored products.

The last decade has seen a notable improvement of dust observational capabilities in terms of considered parameters, geographical coverage, and delivery times, as well as of tailored products of interest to both the scientific community and the various end-users.

Given this progress, here we review the current state of observational capabilities, including in situ, ground-based, and satellite remote sensing observations in northern Africa, the Middle East, and Europe for the provision of dust information considering the needs of various users. We also critically discuss observational gaps and related unresolved questions while providing suggestions for overcoming the current limitations.

Our review aims to be a milestone for discussing dust observational gaps at a global level to address the needs of users, from research communities to nonscientific stakeholders.