Work

Transported African Dust in the Lower Marine Atmospheric Boundary Layer is Internally Mixed with Sea Salt Contributing to Increased Hygroscopicity and a Lower Lidar Depolarization Ratio

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: . Saharan dust is transported across the Atlantic, yet the chemical, physical, and morphological transformations dust undergoes within the marine atmospheric boundary layer (MABL) remain poorly understood. These transformations are critical for understanding dust's radiative and geochemical impacts, representation in atmospheric models, and detection via lidar remote sensing. Here, we present coordinated observations from the Office of Naval Research's Moisture and Aerosol Gradients/Physics of Inversion Evolution (MAGPIE) August 2023 campaign at Ragged Point, Barbados. These include vertically resolved single-particle analyses, mass concentrations of dust and sea spray, and High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) retrievals. Single-particle data show that dust within the Saharan Air Layer (SAL) remains externally mixed, with a corresponding high HSRL-derived linear depolarization ratio (LDR) of ~0.3. However, at lower altitudes, dust becomes internally mixed with sea spray, resulting in increased particle sphericity likely due to an increase in hygroscopicity, which suppresses the LDR signal to below 0.1 even in the presence of high dust loadings (e.g., ~120 µg/m3). The low depolarization in the presence of high dust in the MABL is likely due to a combination of the differences between the single scattering properties of dust and spherical particles, and the potential modification of the dust optical properties from an increased hygroscopicity of dust caused by the mixing with sea salt in the humid MABL. These results highlight the importance of the aerosol particle mixing state when interpreting LDR-derived dust retrievals and estimating surface dust concentrations in satellite products and atmospheric models.

Source: Atmospheric chemistry and physics

DOI: 10.5194/acp-26-983-2026