Every year around these months in the Canary Islands the winds shift to easterly/southeasterly leading to African dust events. These events are what we call Calima and jokingly when it happens we say that our neighbors are cleaning their carpets. These events have surprised some of our tourists on their winter holidays as when they happen our skies became denser, looking like a yellowish to reddish fog and the temperatures are usually high. The GOB and GEOGAR research groups of the IOCAG have been studying these events for many years. They have seen that these events bring dust from Western Sahara, Morocco, Algeria, Mali, and Mauritania. The deposition of these particles on the sea leads to phyto and zooplankton blooms affecting the biological carbon pump and also to an increase in the nitrogen fixation done by the diazotrophs. In land, these depositions nourish the floors. These dust events are so interesting that some other research groups study them further southwest like in the PIRATA array.
These days we are going through one of these events (though the pictures beneath are from 2018) and I recall some of the lectures of my undergrad in marine sciences as I prepare to start lecturing. |
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