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Measurement of Aerosols Optical Thickness of the Atmosphere using the GLOBE Handheld Sun Photometer
Published on: May 29, 2019
Columnar and surface aerosol load over the Iberian Peninsula establishing annual cycles, trends, and relationships in
D Mateos1, V E Cachorro1, C Toledano1
1Grupo de Óptica Atmosférica, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Valladolid, Paseo Belén 7, CP 47011 Valladolid, Spain.
Abstract:
The study of atmospheric aerosol load over the Iberian Peninsula (IP) under a climatological perspective is accomplished by means of PM10 and AOD440 nm measurements from EMEP and AERONET networks, respectively, in the period 2000-2013. The PM10 annual cycles in five Iberian sectors show a main maximum in summer and a secondary maximum in spring, which is only observed in the southern area for the AOD climatology. The characteristics of PM10-AOD annual cycles of each geographical sector are explained by the different climatology of the air mass origins and their apportioning. The two magnitudes are correlated with a factor ranging between 20 and 90 depending on the sector. The temporal evolution of the aerosol load has shown a notable decrease in the IP since the 1980s. Statistically significant trends are obtained in the Northeastern sector with a reduction of 26% (period 1985-2000) for the total suspended particles, which continues for the PM10 data with a value of 35% per decade (2001-2013), and also in the whole column, 61% per decade in the AOD440 nm (2004-2013).
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