Characteristics of the east Mediterranean dust variability on small spatial and temporal scales Accepted for publication in Atmospheric Environment

摘要: The presence of naturally‐occurring dust is a conspicuous meteorological phenomenon characterised by very high load relatively coarse airborne particulate matter (PM), which may contain also various deleterious chemical and biological materials. Much work has been carried out to study the modelling generation transport plumes, assessment their temporal characteristics on large (>1000 km) spatial scale. This studies in resolution mesoscale (<100 km). small scale variability important both for better understanding physical PM exposure specification epidemiological studies. Unsupervised clustering‐based method, using PM10 records derived attributes, was developed applied detect impact at observation locations monitoring array. It found that cover whole area but often coverage partial. On average, larger extent event, higher more homogeneous are associated concentrations. Dust event lengths however, only weakly with concentrations (Pearson correlation below 0.44). concentration during spatially events fact occurrence strongly correlated elevation above sea level reporting stations 0.87, p‐value< 10 5 ) points