Recent increase of Saharan dust transport over the Mediterranean Sea, as revealed from ocean color satellite (SeaWiFS) observations

An algorithm was previously developed and validated, which is capable of detecting blue‐absorbing aerosols from near infrared and visible remote‐sensing observations, as they are in particular collected by satellite ocean color sensors. This algorithm has been applied to 7 years (1998–2004) of Sea‐Viewing Wide Field‐of‐View Sensor (SeaWiFS) observations over the Mediterranean Sea, on the one hand to further illustrate the appropriateness of ocean color observations to provide relevant information about aerosol types and in particular absorbing aerosols, and, on the other hand, to describe the seasonal and interannual variability of Saharan dust over the Mediterranean Sea during the SeaWiFS era. This extensive application allowed the validation of the retrieved aerosol optical thickness to be more thoroughly performed, thanks to data from the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET). The results of this validation and the mapping of dust aerosols and of the associated optical thickness demonstrate the skill of the algorithm. These results are in agreement with, and provide a complement to, the results of previous studies based on other remote sensing techniques, which were applied to data from the 1980s and early 1990s. They also show an increase of the dust transport over the Mediterranean over the 1998‐to‐2004 time period.