Saharan dust over Italy: Simulations with regional air quality model BOLCHEM

Saharan dust is transported over Mediterranean area, dust reaching often different regions of Italy. To the scope of predicting the advection of dust and its physical and chemical properties over Italy, a dust emission scheme has been implemented in the air quality model BOLCHEM, which solves simultaneously the chemical and meteorological equations. This study demonstrates the ability of BOLCHEM to predict the dust events over Italy and evaluates the impact of differrent parameterizations used in the dust production.