Francophone Fairy Tales in West Africa and the Caribbean

Abstract. This study characterizes a massive African dust intrusion into the Caribbean Basin and southern U.S. in June 2020, which is nicknamed the Godzilla dust plume, using a comprehensive set of satellite and ground-based observations (including MODIS, CALIOP, SEVIRI, AERONET, and EPA Air Quality network) and the NASA GEOS global aerosol transport model. The MODIS data record registered this massive dust intrusion event as the most intense episode over the past two decades. During this event, the aerosol optical depth observed by AERONET and MODIS peaked at 3.5 off the coast of West Africa and 1.8 in the Caribbean Basin. CALIOP observations show that the top of dust plume reached altitudes of 6–8 km in West Africa and descended to about 4 km altitude over the Caribbean Basin and 2 km over the U.S. Gulf coast. The dust plume degraded the air quality in Puerto Rico to the hazardous level, with maximum daily PM10 concentration of 453 μg m−3 recorded on June 23. The dust intrusion into the U.S. raised the PM2.5 concentration on June 27 to a level exceeding the EPA air quality standard in about 40 % of the stations in the southern U.S. Satellite observations reveal that dust emissions from convection-generated haboobs and other sources in West Africa were large albeit not extreme on a daily basis. However, the anomalous strength and northern shift of the North Atlantic Subtropical High (NASH) together with the Azores low formed a closed circulation pattern that allowed for accumulation of the dust near the African coast for about four days. When the NASH was weakened and wandered back to south, the dust outflow region was dominated by a strong African Easterly Jet that rapidly transported the accumulated dust from the coastal region toward the Caribbean Basin, resulting in the record-breaking African dust intrusion. In comparison to satellite observations, the GEOS model well reproduced the MODIS observed tracks of the meandering dust plume as it was carried by the wind systems. However, the model substantially underestimated dust emissions from haboobs and did not lift up enough dust to the middle troposphere for ensuing long-range transport. Consequently, the model largely missed the satellite-observed elevated dust plume along the cross-ocean track and underestimated the dust intrusion into the Caribbean Basin by a factor of more than 4. Modeling improvements need to focus on developing more realistic representations of moist convection, haboobs, and the vertical transport of dust.

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Book Review: Field Recordings of Black Singers and Musicians: An Annotated Discography of Artists from West Africa, the Caribbean and the Eastern and Southern United States, 1901–1943

Reference & User Services Quarterly ◽

10.5860/rusq.58.3.7057 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 58 (3) ◽

pp. 194

Author(s):

Molly Molloy

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

African American ◽

West Africa ◽

Southern United States ◽

Sound Recording ◽

African Music ◽

Field Recordings ◽

The Caribbean

This last work of author/compiler Craig Martin Gibbs joins his other unique discographies from the same publisher—Black Recording Artists, 1877–1926: An Annotated Discography (2012) and Calypso and Other Music of Trinidad, 1912–1962: An Annotated Discography (2015)—to provide detailed access to the legacy of African American and African music from the earliest years of sound recording. As noted in the front matter, Craig Martin Gibbs died in October 2017.

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France and the Slave Trade

The Death of the French Atlantic ◽

10.1093/oso/9780199568956.003.0004 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 60-78

Author(s):

Alan Forrest

Keyword(s):

Eighteenth Century ◽

West Africa ◽

Slave Trade ◽

Middle Passage ◽

Short Overview ◽

Slave Ships ◽

The Caribbean ◽

Atlantic Slave Trade ◽

Triangular Trade

The chapter begins with a short overview of France’s involvement in the Atlantic slave trade and shows how, by the second half of the eighteenth century, more and more merchants and investors became dazzled by the profits offered by a successful slave voyage. All the Atlantic ports engaged in the slave trade, though Nantes had the highest level of slaving and the greatest dependence on the triangular trade with west Africa and the Caribbean. The economics of a slave voyage are analysed, as well as the cargoes purchased for trading in Africa; the captains’ involvement in slave markets in both West Africa and the Caribbean; the risks run by the slave ships and their crews during the voyage; and the conditions that were endured below deck during the Middle Passage.

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Pre-Mesozoic origin and paleogeography of blocks in the Caribbean, South Appalachian and West African domains and their impact on the post “variscan” evolution

BSGF - Earth Sciences Bulletin ◽

10.2113/gssgfbull.184.1-2.5 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 184 (1-2) ◽

pp. 5-20 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Michel Villeneuve ◽

Boris Marcaillou

Keyword(s):

West Africa ◽

Atlantic Ocean ◽

West African ◽

Large Area ◽

Tectonic Event ◽

Western Sahara ◽

The North ◽

Gondwana Margin ◽

The Caribbean ◽

North American Craton

Abstract New geodynamical data from West Africa bring consistent informations on the pre-Mesozoic reconstruction within a large area running from the western Sahara to the Colombian cordillera. These new data support a Neoproterozoic Ocean (WANO) between the Amazonian (AMC) and West African (WAC) cratons previously to the Iapetus and Rheic oceans. We delineate 31 blocs detached from the surrounding three continents: NAC (North American Craton), AMC and WAC. 7 came from the WAC margin, 7 from the NAC, 6 from the AMC and 11 from an intermediate volcano sedimentary domain (COB) built on a 1200–1000 Ma oceanic crust. These imbricated blocks formed a tight mosaic by the Hercynian/Alleghanian tectonic event which gave way to the Pangea super-continent. But, during the Atlantic Ocean opening these blocks began to move. They were separated by new oceanic basins. However, previously to the Pangea, blocks from the COB domain formed two sets of garlands located on the northwestern Gondwana margin. The northern one moved to the North until the Silurian to collide the NAC (Taconic tectonic event) meanwhile the southern one remains on the Gondwana margin. All together were gathered by the Carboniferous/Permian time. Then, the framework for the opening of the Atlantic Ocean was not totally disconnected from the “Variscan” collage and many variscan weakness zones were re-used as initial breaking zones. Beyond this tectonic impact, the pre-mesozoic assemblage allows us to compare this “Caribbean” island arc with another one: the Indonesian “Banda” arc. Thus, West Africa is a geological key area for correlations between the Caribbean, the Appalachian, the Brazilian “Nordeste” and the West European domains and for the understanding of the Atlantic Ocean opening process.

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The Pan-African Intelligentsia in West Africa and the Caribbean: A Review Article

Caribbean Quarterly ◽

10.1080/00086495.1985.11829409 ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 31 (3-4) ◽

pp. 60-65

Author(s):

Najmul Abedin

Keyword(s):

West Africa ◽

Review Article ◽

Pan African ◽

The Caribbean

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Selena Axelrod Winsnes (ed. and tr.): Letters on West Africa and the slave trade: Paul Erdmann Isert's Journey to Guinea and the Caribbean Islands in Columbia (1788). (Union Academique Internationale Fontes Historiae Africanae. Series Varia, vn.) x, 278 pp. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1992. £30.

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies ◽

10.1017/s0041977x00006194 ◽

1993 ◽

Vol 56 (2) ◽

pp. 421-421

Author(s):

Richard Rathbone

Keyword(s):

New York ◽

West Africa ◽

Slave Trade ◽

Caribbean Islands ◽

Oxford University ◽

The Caribbean ◽

Oxford University Press

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Some social and phenomenological characteristics of psychotic immigrants

Psychological Medicine ◽

10.1017/s0033291700052119 ◽

1981 ◽

Vol 11 (2) ◽

pp. 289-302 ◽

Cited By ~ 96

Author(s):

Roland Littlewood ◽

Maurice Lipsedge

Keyword(s):

Retrospective Study ◽

West Africa ◽

Ethnic Group ◽

West Indian ◽

Married Women ◽

West African ◽

High Rate ◽

Psychiatric Unit ◽

The West ◽

The Caribbean

SynopsisVarious studies have shown: (i) increased rates of psychoses in immigrants to Britain, and a particularly high rate of schizophrenia in the West Indian- and West African-born; and (ii) a greater proportion of atypical psychoses in immigrants. A retrospective study of psychotic inpatients from a London psychiatric unit demonstrated increased rates of schizophrenia in patients from the Caribbean and West Africa. These patients included a high proportion of those with paranoid and religious phenomenology, those with frequent changes of diagnosis, formal admissions, and married women. The West Indian-born had been in Britain for nearly 10 years before first seeing a psychiatrist and, if they had an illness with religious symptomatology, were likely to have been in hospital for only 3 weeks. Rates of schizophrenia without paranoid phenomenology were similar in each ethnic group. It is suggested that the increase in the diagnosis of schizophrenia in the West Indian- born, and possibly in the West African-born, may be due in part to the occurrence of acute psychotic reactions which are diagnosed as schizophrenia.

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Biogeography of Iberian Atlantic Neogene marginelliform gastropods (Marginellidae, Cystiscidae): global change and transatlantic colonization

Journal of Paleontology ◽

10.1666/11-104.1 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 85 (6) ◽

pp. 1052-1066 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Carlos Marques Da Silva ◽

Bernard Landau ◽

Rafael La Perna

Keyword(s):

West Africa ◽

Sea Water ◽

Atlantic Coast ◽

Central American ◽

Marine Gastropods ◽

High Productivity ◽

Complex Process ◽

Central American Seaway ◽

Central Portugal ◽

The Caribbean

The Marginellidae Fleming and the Cystiscidae Stimpson, herein collectively referred to as marginelliform gastropods, are convergent families of thermophilic marine gastropods. Shallow-water marginelliform gastropods are found in the Ibero-Moroccan Gulf and Mediterranean, diversity rapidly increasing towards tropical West Africa. Surprisingly, in the tropical and subtropical European Miocene fossil record, marginelliform genera of tropical affinity such asPersiculaSchumacher andPrunumHerrmannsen, occurring today in West Africa, are altogether missing. Others, such asMarginellaLamarck, are present only in the southwestern Iberian and Mediterranean Neogene record. This work describes the marginelliform gastropods from the Atlantic Iberian Neogene. Ten species are recorded, of which three are new,Persicula mikhailovaen. sp.,Gibberula costaen. sp., andGibberula brebionin. sp. This study shows thatGibberulaSwainson andVolvarinaHinds have been present in Europe since the Eocene.Marginellamay have originated in southern Africa and migrated north to Europe in the Miocene, never extending further north than west central Portugal.PersiculaandPrunumprobably originated in the Caribbean and migrated east during the Pliocene, following closure of the Central American Seaway. The colonization of the Pliocene European Atlantic coast by gastropods of these genera was selective, only where high sea-water temperature and high productivity were combined. These findings suggest that post-Messinian recolonization of the Mediterranean during the Pliocene was a complex process, involving colonization by groups originating in various regions of the Atlantic, including Europe, Africa and the Americas.

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