A weather regime characterisation of winter biomass aerosol transport from southern Africa

Gaetani, Marco; Pohl, Benjamin; Alvarez Castro, Maria del Carmen; Flamant, Cyrille; Formenti, Paola

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-16575-2021

Articles | Volume 21, issue 21

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-16575-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Special issue:

New observations and related modelling studies of the aerosol–cloud–climate...

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-16575-2021

© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 21, issue 21

Research article

|

12 Nov 2021

Research article |

| 12 Nov 2021

A weather regime characterisation of winter biomass aerosol transport from southern Africa

Marco Gaetani, Benjamin Pohl, Maria del Carmen Alvarez Castro, Cyrille Flamant, and Paola Formenti

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-21-16575-2021-supplement

Data sets

CAMS global reanalysis (EAC4) A. Inness, M. Ades, A. Agustí-Panareda, J. Barré, A. Benedictow, A. Blechschmidt, J. Dominguez, R. Engelen, H. Eskes, J. Flemming, V. Huijnen, L. Jones, Z. Kipling, S. Massart, M. Parrington, V.-H. Peuch, M. Razinger, S. Remy, M. Schulz, and M. Suttie https://ads.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/cdsapp#!/dataset/cams-global-reanalysis-eac4?tab=overview

AERONET station data NASA Goddard Space Flight Center https://aeronet.gsfc.nasa.gov/

SAM daily index NOAA Climate Prediction Center https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/

ERA5 hourly data on single levels from 1979 to present H. Hersbach, B. Bell, P. Berrisford, G. Biavati, A. Horányi, J. Muñoz Sabater, J. Nicolas, C. Peubey, R. Radu, I. Rozum, D. Schepers, A. Simmons, C. Soci, D. Dee, and J.-N. Thépaut https://doi.org/10.24381/cds.bd0915c6

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Short summary

During the dry austral winter, biomass fires in tropical Africa emit large amounts of smoke in the atmosphere, with large impacts on climate and air quality. The study of the relationship between atmospheric circulation and smoke transport shows that midlatitude atmospheric disturbances may deflect the smoke from tropical Africa towards southern Africa. Understanding the distribution of the smoke in the region is crucial for climate modelling and air quality monitoring.