An improved geochemical characterization of Arabian dust sources

Abstract:

Dust is an important component of Earth’s climate system, directly affecting the global radiation budget and hydrological cycle. The interaction of aerosols with clouds and the impact on regional and global energy budgets remains one of the largest sources of uncertainty in climate model predictions. Terrigenous dust is also a major contributor to air pollution with important consequences for human health. The Arabian Peninsula is one of the largest sources of atmospheric dust in the world but our ability to fingerprint its contribution to distal sediments in the Indian Ocean and beyond is limited. This is a result of a poorly developed knowledge base of the mineralogical and geochemical composition of exported sediments. Here we present new elemental and radiogenic (Sr and Nd) isotopic data for multiple dust producing regions across the Arabian Peninsula. We compare our results to existing data characterising other sources of terrigenous sediment to the northern Indian Ocean to assess the suitability of marine sediments as an archive of past dust activity. Our results suggest that dust from the Arabian Peninsula can be distinguished geochemically from sources in Northeast Africa and the Indian subcontinent.