A 9-YearThee-Dimensional Dust Climatology of the Eastern Mediterranean Basin via CALIPSO-Derived Product

The Eastern Mediterranean Basin is an intricate transition region between Eurasia and the Middle East along with Alpine-Himalayan orogenic belt. It is almost amidst the dusty belt and a unique hot spot of climate change in the grand picture. As it involves desert source areas, dust-carrying winds to remote downstream locations enable the entire basin to expose particulate matter throughout the year. As well as global oscillation systems, increasing surface temperatures promote uplifted and remotely transported dust particles. In order to clarify this phenomenon, the main aim is to determine the aerosol and, particularly, dust climatology of the Eastern Mediterranean Basin via CALIPSO onboard Lidar CALIOP. This prominent instrument enables us to better understand aerosols, clouds, and their interactions associated with climatic processes. Using the 9-year CALIPSO-derived aerosol-dust dataset, horizontal and vertical distributions, transport heights and case incidences were analyzed. Multi-year climatology results indicated that the dust extinction coefficient, dust mass in the total aerosol bulk, and uplifted heights increased as the location shifted from west to east. Moreover, for dust transport, spring months are more dominant in the western part, while summer and autumn are in the central and eastern parts. Mountain range systems in the Alpine-Himalayan Orogenic belt obstruct the lofted and buoyant particles from reaching higher latitudes in the north. Besides, dust particles prone to accumulate on the southern slopes of the high ridges pose air quality degradation of the distant cities from the dust source areas. In addition to remote cities having ~0.2 peak AOD values, source regions exceed 1.0 aerosol and 0.8 dust optical depth values. The whole basin's ambient air has an average of 40% dust mass in the total aerosol load. From the eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea, desert areas and particulate matter are more prone to intrude into inner lands with a continental connection. So, south-eastern Anatolia in Turkey reflects the desert levels with approximately a dust load of 70%.