I am pleased to share my latest research investigating the long-term impact of desert dust on aviation operations at Cairo International Airport (HECA).

Dust aerosols represent one of the major environmental challenges affecting aircraft operating in arid and semi-arid regions. However, long-term observational assessments based on ground measurements remain relatively limited.

In this study, I integrated:

• 14 years of AERONET Level 2.0 observations (2010–2023)

• Hourly METAR meteorological observations

• NASA MERRA-2 aerosol reanalysis

• MODIS satellite products

Main findings

• Ground-based AERONET observations indicate that MERRA-2 systematically underestimates aerosol loading over Cairo.
• More than 750 operational hours were associated with dust events during the study period.
• Estimated aircraft dust ingestion reached approximately 79 g per landing–takeoff cycle under severe dust conditions.

These findings demonstrate the value of combining long-term ground observations with satellite and reanalysis datasets to improve environmental risk assessment for aviation and airport operations in desert environments.

I welcome comments, questions, and discussion from researchers working in atmospheric science, remote sensing, aviation safety, and environmental monitoring.

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-10048259/v1