Five Years of Dust Episodes at the Southern Italy GAW Regional Coastal Mediterranean Observatory: Multisensors and Modeling Analysis

Abstract

The Mediterranean area is a climate-change hotspot because of the natural and anthropogenic pollution pressure. The presence of natural aerosols, such as dust, influences solar radiation and contributes to the detection, in storm episodes, of significant concentrations of PM10 in Southern Italy, where generally fresh and clean air is due to local circulation, and particulate matter concentrations are very low. We present the results of medium-term observations (2015–2019) at Lamezia Terme GAW (Global Atmospheric Watch) Regional Observatory, with the purpose of identifying the dust incursion events by studying the aerosol properties in the site. To achieve this goal, the experimental data, collected by several instruments, have been also correlated with the large-scale atmospheric patterns derived by the ERA5 reanalysis dataset, in order to study the meteorological conditions that strongly influence dust outbreaks and their spatio-temporal behavior. An intense dust-outbreak episode, which occurred on 23–27 April 2019, was chosen as a case study; a detailed analysis was carried out considering surface and column optical properties, chemical properties, large-scale pattern circulation, air-quality modeling/satellite products, and back-trajectory analysis, to confirm the capability of the modeled large-scale atmospheric fields to correctly simulate the conditions mainly related to the desert dust-outbreak events.