Relative importance of three climate factors on dust emissions over North Africa

The breakdown of nocturnal low-level jets (NLLJs), West African heat low (WAHL), and Harmattan Surges (HS) have been proved to be important meteorological drivers of the seasonal variation of dust emissions over North Africa. This study further investigated their relative contributions to the interannual variation of dust emissions from 1980 to 2018. Dust emissions from the Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2), precipitation data from TerraClimate, and wind speed, temperature, and geopotential from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) were used to examine the roles of precipitation and wind speed in the dust emission trend as well as the spatiotemporal characteristics of the contributions of those three meteorological factors to the interannual variation of dust emissions. Results indicated that the dust emissions over Sahel and the southern coast of Mediterranean were more sensitive to precipitation rather than wind speed, while areas that were not influenced by rainfall were highly correlated with the cube of the wind speed at 10 m above surface with p < 0.001. The regional difference in the contribution of the three meteorological factors was significant. HS was the main contributor for dust emissions over the northern North Africa primarily in winter and spring. NLLJs primarily controlled the southern part (south of 20°N) in almost all seasons especially in winter and spring, while they contributed more to dust emissions north of 20° N from June to August. The contribution of WAHL started from the south of the Hoggar-Tibesti channel and the lee of Ethiopian Highlands in winter, then it moved northwestward in spring and reached their strongest states in summer.