Chemical and mineralogical composition of southern Africa dust aerosols

This dataset supports the article “Southern African dust aerosols are rich in micronutrients, K-feldspar and carbonate minerals” by Baldo et al. (2026), submitted to Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. The paper presents the first comprehensive characterisation of the chemical and mineralogical composition of mineral dust from Southern Africa, a major global dust source that significantly affects regional climate and marine ecosystems. Dust aerosol samples were generated using soils collected at key natural and emerging anthropogenic dust sources in Southern Africa. Soil collection sites include the Etosha Pan, the Central Namib Gravel Plain, and the Kuiseb riverbed at the Gobabeb Namib Research Centre; the southwestern Kalahari in Botswana; areas of the Kalahari Desert north and south of the Okavango Delta in northwestern Botswana; agricultural soils in the Free State; savannah soils at Skukuza in the Kruger National Park in South Africa; and samples from the abandoned copper mine Hope Mine in Namibia. Furthermore, soil samples from the terminal reaches of the Huab, Kuiseb, and Omaruru rivers were collected along 1-km riverbed transects at 100-m intervals to ensure representativeness. The “Générateur d’Aérosol Minéral En Laboratoire” (GAMEL, Lafon et al., 2014) and the Multiphase Atmospheric Experimental Simulation Chamber (CESAM, Wang et al., 2011) were used to generate dust aerosols from parent soils. The dust particles were collected on 37-mm-diameter, 0.4-µm-pore-size polycarbonate filters using custom-made filter holders operated in parallel (Caponi et al., 2017). Table SD1 presents the masses (μg) of the measured crustal elements Na, Mg, Al, Si, P, K, Ca, Ti, Mn, and Fe, collected on the filters and determined by X-ray fluorescence (XRF). Table SD2 reports the mineral mass fractions (wt%) determined by X-ray diffraction (XRD).