Diverging trends in aerosol sulfate and nitrate measured in the remote North Atlantic in Barbados are attributed to clean air policies, African smoke, and  anthropogenic emissions

Gaston, Cassandra J.; Prospero, Joseph M.; Foley, Kristen; Pye, Havala O. T.; Custals, Lillian; Blades, Edmund; Sealy, Peter; Christie, James A.

doi:https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-8049-2024

Articles | Volume 24, issue 13

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-8049-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-8049-2024

© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Articles | Volume 24, issue 13

Research article

|

16 Jul 2024

Research article |

| 16 Jul 2024

Diverging trends in aerosol sulfate and nitrate measured in the remote North Atlantic in Barbados are attributed to clean air policies, African smoke, and anthropogenic emissions

Cassandra J. Gaston, Joseph M. Prospero, Kristen Foley, Havala O. T. Pye, Lillian Custals, Edmund Blades, Peter Sealy, and James A. Christie

Supplement

https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-24-8049-2024-supplement

Data sets

Daily nitrate, sulfate, and sea salt aerosol mass concentrations measured at Ragged Point, Barbados from 1990-2011 and aerosol and meteorological model predictions from EQUATES Cassandra J. Gaston et al. https://doi.org/10.17604/k869-9c71

Data contributing to Zuidema et al., 2019: \"Is summer African dust arriving earlier at Barbados? The updated long-term in-situ dust mass concentration time series from Ragged Point, Barbados and Miami, Florida\" P. Zuidema https://doi.org/10.17604/q3vf-8m31

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Short summary

To understand how changing emissions have impacted aerosols in remote regions, we measured nitrate and sulfate in Barbados and compared them to model predictions from EPA’s Air QUAlity TimE Series (EQUATES). Nitrate was stable, except for spikes in 2008 and 2010 due to transported smoke. Sulfate decreased in the 1990s due to reductions in sulfur dioxide (SO₂) in the US and Europe; then it increased in the 2000s, likely due to anthropogenic emissions from Africa.