Anthropogenic Decline of African Dust: Insights from the Holocene Records and Beyond
African dust exhibits strong variability on a range of time scales. Here we show that the interhemispheric contrast in Atlantic SST (ICAS) drives African dust variability at decadal to millennial timescales, and the strong anthropogenic increase of the ICAS in the future will decrease African dust l...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
American Geophysical Union (AGU)
2021
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/133806 |
| _version_ | 1811069675833917440 |
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| author | Yuan, Tianle Yu, Hongbin Chin, Mian Remer, Lorraine A McGee, David Evan, Amato |
| author_facet | Yuan, Tianle Yu, Hongbin Chin, Mian Remer, Lorraine A McGee, David Evan, Amato |
| author_sort | Yuan, Tianle |
| collection | MIT |
| description | African dust exhibits strong variability on a range of time scales. Here we show that the interhemispheric contrast in Atlantic SST (ICAS) drives African dust variability at decadal to millennial timescales, and the strong anthropogenic increase of the ICAS in the future will decrease African dust loading to a level never seen during the Holocene. We provide a physical framework to understand the relationship between the ICAS and African dust activity: positive ICAS anomalies push the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) northward and decrease surface wind speed over African dust source regions, which reduces dust emission and transport. It provides a unified framework for and is consistent with relationships in the literature. We find strong observational and proxy-record support for the ICAS-ITCZ-dust relationship during the past 160 and 17,000 years. Model-projected anthropogenic increase of the ICAS will reduce African dust by as much as 60%, which has broad consequences. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:14:10Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/133806 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T08:14:10Z |
| publishDate | 2021 |
| publisher | American Geophysical Union (AGU) |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1338062021-10-28T05:00:32Z Anthropogenic Decline of African Dust: Insights from the Holocene Records and Beyond Yuan, Tianle Yu, Hongbin Chin, Mian Remer, Lorraine A McGee, David Evan, Amato African dust exhibits strong variability on a range of time scales. Here we show that the interhemispheric contrast in Atlantic SST (ICAS) drives African dust variability at decadal to millennial timescales, and the strong anthropogenic increase of the ICAS in the future will decrease African dust loading to a level never seen during the Holocene. We provide a physical framework to understand the relationship between the ICAS and African dust activity: positive ICAS anomalies push the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) northward and decrease surface wind speed over African dust source regions, which reduces dust emission and transport. It provides a unified framework for and is consistent with relationships in the literature. We find strong observational and proxy-record support for the ICAS-ITCZ-dust relationship during the past 160 and 17,000 years. Model-projected anthropogenic increase of the ICAS will reduce African dust by as much as 60%, which has broad consequences. 2021-10-27T19:56:45Z 2021-10-27T19:56:45Z 2020 2021-09-17T14:04:44Z Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/133806 en 10.1029/2020GL089711 Geophysical Research Letters Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ application/pdf American Geophysical Union (AGU) American Geophysical Union (AGU) |
| spellingShingle | Yuan, Tianle Yu, Hongbin Chin, Mian Remer, Lorraine A McGee, David Evan, Amato Anthropogenic Decline of African Dust: Insights from the Holocene Records and Beyond |
| title | Anthropogenic Decline of African Dust: Insights from the Holocene Records and Beyond |
| title_full | Anthropogenic Decline of African Dust: Insights from the Holocene Records and Beyond |
| title_fullStr | Anthropogenic Decline of African Dust: Insights from the Holocene Records and Beyond |
| title_full_unstemmed | Anthropogenic Decline of African Dust: Insights from the Holocene Records and Beyond |
| title_short | Anthropogenic Decline of African Dust: Insights from the Holocene Records and Beyond |
| title_sort | anthropogenic decline of african dust insights from the holocene records and beyond |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/133806 |
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