In the period 1966-82 lungs from 333 workers who had been employed at a Royal Naval dockyard were referred to the MRC Pneumoconiosis Unit where they were investigated for the severity of asbestosis, the presence of tumours, and an assessment of mineral fibre content and the type and amount of mineral present. The occupational exposure to mineral dust has been coded for 189 of these cases. There...

The aerosol radiative effect in the long-wave (LW) spectral range is sometimes not taken into account in atmospheric aerosol forcing studies at local scale because the LW aerosol effect is assumed to be negligible. At regional and global scale this effect is partially taken into account: aerosol absorption is taken into account but scattering is still neglected. However, aerosols with strong ab...

We describe a model for predicting the size-resolved distribution of atmospheric dust for climate and chemistry-related studies. The dust distribution from 1990–1999 is simulated with our mineral aerosol entrainment and deposition module embedded in a chemical transport model. Mobilization processes include entrainment thresholds, moisture inhibition, drag partitioning, and saltation feedback. ...

Ambient PM2.5 aerosol samples were collected from Wroclaw residential area between January and April 2009, and their elemental compositions were studied. The mean mass concentration of PM2.5 was 36±21 μg/m. Based on the variability in elemental composition of atmospheric aerosols, using principal component analysis (PCA) and multiple linear regression (MLRA), four main sources of fine particula...

We use a 3-D global chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem) to interpret aircraft observations of nitrate and sulfate partitioning in transpacific dust plumes during the INTEX-B campaign of April–May 2006. The model includes explicit transport of size-resolved mineral dust and its alkalinity, nitrate, and sulfate content. The observations show that particulate nitrate is primarily associated with ...

[1] During transport, atmospheric aerosol particles experience nonlinear size-dependent deposition processes which affect their size distribution. This implies that the aerosol particle size distribution (PSD) should be well represented in three-dimensional transport models that simulate their transport and their radiative or biogeochemical impacts. In particular, mineral dust aerosols exhibit ...

Time-series analysis of Earth’s major dust source regions reveals common traits in responses of wind erosion to climate anomalies. Lag crosscorrelations of monthly mean aerosol optical depth, precipitation, vegetation, and wind speed are examined from 1979–1993. The response to monthly climate anomalies can differ greatly from the response to seasonal mean climate. The signs, magnitudes, and la...

[1] Numerical simulations and sensitivity studies have been performed to assess the potential for using brightness temperature spectra from a ground-based Atmospheric Emitted Radiance Interferometer (AERI) during the United Arab Emirates Unified Aerosol Experiment (UAE) for detecting/retrieving mineral dust aerosol. A methodology for separating dust from clouds and retrieving the dust IR optica...