The Nile Delta major cities, particularly Cairo, experienced stagnant air pollution episodes, known as Black Cloud, every year over the past decade during autumn. Low-elevated thermal inversion layers play a crucial role in intensifying pollution impacts. Carbon monoxide, ozone, atmospheric temperature, water vapor, and methane measurements from the tropospheric emission spectrometer (TES) on board the Aura have been used to assess the dominant component below the inversion layer. In this study, time series analysis, autocorrelations, and cross correlations are performed to gain a better understanding of the connections between those parameters and their local effect. Satellite-based data were obtained for the years 2005–2010. The parameters mentioned were investigated throughout the whole year in order to study the possible episodes that take place in addition to their change from year to year. Ozone and carbon monoxide were the two major indicators to the most basic episodes that occur over Cairo and the Delta region. 1. Introduction Identifying the origin (natural versus anthropogenic) and dynamics of aerosols over different regions at varying temporal and spatial scales will provide more knowledge on impacts of aerosols on the regional climate and the ultimate connections to the Earth’s global climate system [1]. Over the last decade, aerosols have been studied quantitatively regionally and globally using satellite remote sensing and modeling. Such studies proved to be very useful in climate studies [2, 3]. The Mediterranean basin aerosols originate from a variety of sources, which are either natural (sea salts, desert dust) or anthropogenic (local sources) due to the increasing urbanization and industrialization, as well as long-range transport [4–6]. At regional scale, the Mediterranean is exposed to air pollution with levels exceeding the typical air-quality standards. This is particularly true for the Delta region, being at the crossroads of different aerosol species originating from local urban-industrial and biomass-burning activities, regional dust sources, and European pollution from the north [7–9]. Over the past decade Cairo, Egypt, located at a longitude of 31°13 and latitude of 30.2°, the largest city of Africa and one of the world’s megacities with a population of more than 20 million people and more than one third of the national industry, has been suffering from major air pollution problems. Cairo and the Greater Delta region have recorded much higher air pollution episodes as compared to the past few decades. As a result, it is also
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