Browsing by Subject "Eastern Mediterranean"

Sand and dust storms are one of the major regional environmental problems that affect human health. Many environmental studies have focused on airborne dust concentrations observed at different regions and have tried to connect the observations to specific dust source regions. This thesis aims to provide a new dust classifications scheme for the Eastern Mediterranean region, specifically observed in Amman, Jordan. I utilized a combination of a long-term data-base consisting of aerosol particle number concentration in coarse mode (1–10 µm) during November 2013 – July 2018 and air mass back trajectories analysis to visually identify the Sand and Dust Storm (SDS) episodes. The classification included three main source regions of for the submicron dust, namely Sahara, Arabia, and Levant. I also classified the data according to the, episode intensity according to their corresponding number concentrations as no-dust, mild, intermediate, and strong intensities and further classified the range of back trajectories as short, intermediate, long, and very long, which indicates the distance between the observation site and the source region.. The results showed that majority of the dust events and an elevated number of dust days are influenced by a source in Levant and Sahara source region. These events which dominated during 70 days in 2016. The Levant source governed during 60 days during the same period. Other dust sources contributed less to the dusty days, and the lowest dusty days number was due to emissions from Levant & Arabia (19 days). The episode intensity varied censurably and underlined variability from the different source areas. The maximum intensity in the dust episode concentration was linked to Levant & Sahara with a max number concentration of 95 /cm3. The classification method was successful and it was able to establish a dust source database in the Eastern Mediterranean region based on the long-term observations performed in Amman with variable dust concentration and dust periods in different seasons and different meteorological circumstances.