Geocheminar fall-2014

Mineral dust emitted from arid and semi-arid regions of North Africa is an important component of the Earth’s climate and has been causally related to prolonged periods of drought in the Sudano-Sahel region in the later part of the 20th century. We use 4He - a novel proxy of mineral dust- to reconstruct dust activity from the Sahara-Sahel region. The goal is to understand meteorological and climatological controls on the decadal to centennial trends in dust activity from North Africa as well as to evaluate the effect of future climate change on dust mobilization from Sudano-Sahel region.