AI Summary & Key Takeaways
AI InsightThe results indicate that marine aerosol was the most predominant type in both methods while continental aerosol type was also obtained at a high rate over the region.
📌 3 Key Takeaways
Özet
Aerosols released into the atmosphere from anthropogenic sources and natural events affect human health, reduce visibility, and alter Earth's radiation budget. Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD) is a quantitative estimate of the amount of aerosol present in the atmosphere, and it can be used as a proxy for surface particulate matters. The AERONET is a network of ground-based sun photometers, providing globally AOD data. Long-term ground based measurements from all point AERONET V3 Level 2.0 data at 10 sites in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea region covering the countries of Turkey, Romania, Greece, Ukraine and Cyprus were used to determine spatial and temporal distribution of the selected aerosol parameters such as AOD at 440, 500, 870 nm (AOD440, AOD500, AOD870), Angstrom Exponent at 440–870 nm (AE440-870) and fine mode fraction at 500 nm (FMF500) for the period of 1999–2018. Since the combination of AOD, AE440-870 and FMF500 enables categorization of aerosol types, two different classification methods were compared in the region. The first method (M1) divides the aerosols into three categories (marine, desert dust and continental) using the parameters of AOD500 and FMF500 whereas the second method (M2) has five categorizations (marine, continental, biomass burning, desert dust, and mixed-type) using the parameters of AOD440 and AE440-870. The multiyear averaged AOD and AE spatiotemporal variability over the region was also presented at a spatial resolution of 0.5° × 0.625° based on MERRA2 reanalysis data. The results indicate that marine aerosol was the most predominant type in both methods while continental aerosol type was also obtained at a high rate over the region. The highest AOD occurred in summer, while lowest values were observed in winter. A high volume of fine-mode particles was observed during summer with higher AE values caused by carbonaceous aerosols from biomass burning mainly observed at north-western part of the region. In contrast with that, coarse-mode particles, mainly dust, dominated with lower AE values during spring over the southern and eastern parts of the region.