Articles | Volume 20, issue 15
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9281-2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-20-9281-2020
Research article
 | 
06 Aug 2020
Research article |  | 06 Aug 2020

Assessment of natural and anthropogenic aerosol air pollution in the Middle East using MERRA-2, CAMS data assimilation products, and high-resolution WRF-Chem model simulations

Alexander Ukhov, Suleiman Mostamandi, Arlindo da Silva, Johannes Flemming, Yasser Alshehri, Illia Shevchenko, and Georgiy Stenchikov

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Cited articles

Adebiyi, A. A. and Kok, J. F.: Climate models miss most of the coarse dust in the atmosphere, Science Advances, 6, eaaz9507, https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aaz9507, 2020. a
Alghamdi, M. A., Almazroui, M., Shamy, M., Redal, M. A., Alkhalaf, A. K., Hussein, M. A., and Khoder, M. I.: Characterization and elemental composition of atmospheric aerosol loads during springtime dust storm in western Saudi Arabia, Aerosol Air Qual. Res., 15, 440–453, 2015. a
Alharbi, B., Shareef, M. M., and Husain, T.: Study of chemical characteristics of particulate matter concentrations in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Atmos. Pollut. Res., 6, 88–98, 2015. a
Al-Jahdali, M. and Bisher, A. B.: Sulfur dioxide (SO2) accumulation in soil and plant's leaves around an oil refinery: A case study from Saudi Arabia, American Journal Of Environmental Sciences, 4, 84–88, 2008. a
Al-Taani, A. A., Nazzal, Y., Howari, F. M., and Yousef, A.: Long-term trends in ambient fine particulate matter from 1980 to 2016 in United Arab Emirates, Environ. Monit. Assess., 191, 143, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-019-7259-9, 2019. a, b, c
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The data assimilation products MERRA2 and CAMS are tested over the Middle East (ME) against in situ and satellite observations. For the first time, we compared the new MODIS aerosol optical depth (AOD) retrieval, MAIAC, with the Deep Blue and Dark Target MODIS AOD. We conducted 2-year high-resolution WRF-Chem simulations with the most accurate OMI-HTAP SO2 emissions to estimate the contribution of natural and anthropogenic aerosols to the PM pollution in the ME.
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