Columnar properties in “El Montsec” during dust outbreaks

The sun-sky radiometer Cimel CE-318 located at El Montsec station detected the multiple Saharan dust intrusions during February and March. The Cimel instrument belongs to AERONET network, who automatically processed data (level 1.5).

Cimel sun-sky radiometer at the regional background station El Montsec

The Angström exponent showed values lower than 0.5 during some days, especially from 20^th February to 5^th March, indicating the dominance of coarse particles. Some of the episodes were also characterized by high AOD.

Variation of AOD and Angstrom exponent during February and March 2021

The strongest outbreak was detected on 5^th March, although unfortunately the cloudiness of the day before and after prevents analysis of duration.

The AOD was higher than 0.5 throughout the day and even higher than 0.7 for wavelengths lower than 500 nm. The Angstrom exponent that characterized the event was lower than 0.25.

Variation of AOD and Angström exponent on 5th March 2021

The analysis of the HYSPLIT backward trajectories confirms the source of dust particles, with the long-range transport from the Saharan desert at 1500 m and 3000 m.

Backward trajectories on 5th March 2021 using HYSPLIT model