@article{9ae63306b6fa4a1b82d2dd4cb42fdd17,
title = "Atmospheric rivers drive exceptional Saharan dust transport towards Europe",
abstract = "This study highlights the occurrence of atmospheric rivers (ARs) over northwest Africa towards Europe, which were accompanied by intense episodes of Saharan dust transport all the way to Scandinavia, in the winter season. Using a combination of observational and reanalysis data, we investigate two extreme dusty AR events in February 2021 and assess their impact on snow melt in the Alps. The warm, moist, and dusty air mass (spatially-averaged 2-meter temperature and water vapour mixing ratio anomalies of up to 8 K and 3 g kg−1, and aerosol optical depths and dust loadings of up to 0.85 and 11 g m−2, respectively) led to a 50% and 40% decrease in snow depth and surface albedo, respectively, in less than one month during the winter season. ARs over northwest Africa show increasing trends over the past 4 decades, with 78% of AR events associated with severe dust episodes over Europe.",
keywords = "Atmospheric rivers, Dust aerosols, European Alps, Sahara Desert, Snow melting, Water vapour",
author = "Diana Francis and Ricardo Fonseca and Narendra Nelli and Deniz Bozkurt and Ghislain Picard and Bin Guan",
note = "Funding Information: The Spinning Enhanced Visible and Infrared Imager (SEVIRI) satellite images were downloaded from The European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites website (https://eoportal.eumetsat.int/). The Clouds and Earth's Radiant Energy System (CERES) surface fluxes are available on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization's website (https://ceres.larc.nasa.gov/data/), while the vertical profiles of aerosol and cloud properties measured by the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder (CALIOP) instrument has been downloaded from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) website (https://www-calipso.larc.nasa.gov/products/lidar/browse_images/production/). ERA-5 reanalysis data is freely available on the Copernicus' Climate Change Service website (https://climate.copernicus.eu/index.php/climate-reanalysis) while the ERA-Interim reanalysis data is available on the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecast's data portal (https://apps.ecmwf.int/datasets/). The Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2) is available on NASA's EarthData website (https://earthdata.nasa.gov/), while the forecasts of the Goddard Earth Observing System, version 5 model (GEOS-5) are extracted from NASA's Global Modeling and Assimilation Office website (https://gmao.gsfc.nasa.gov/GEOS_systems/). The FluxAlps weather station data were obtained from Romain Biron, Institut des Geosciences de l'Environnement, France. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2021 The Authors",
year = "2022",
month = mar,
doi = "10.1016/j.atmosres.2021.105959",
language = "British English",
volume = "266",
journal = "Atmospheric Research",
issn = "0169-8095",
publisher = "Elsevier B.V.",
}
