## 3 Results and Discussion
### Regional Mean DDREs  
The dust radiative effects of the studied Mediterranean DAEC are also examined on a spatial mean basis. The spatial averaging is made over the part of the MB enclosed by the yellow frame (Figure 1), which includes the areas that are most affected by the dust export from the first (16 June 2016) until the last (third) day (18 June 2016) of the DAEC. The assessment of DDREs at a higher temporal resolution, specifically every 3 h, allows us to simultaneously follow the evolution of the regional mean DDREs at the TOA, in the atmosphere, and at the Earth's surface (they all refer to the absorbed solar radiation at these levels), as shown in Figure 9b. The timeseries of 3-hourly DDREs demonstrate the significant role of the available solar radiation for DDREs, since all DDREs follow the daily cycle of incoming solar radiation at the TOA, maximized at noon (Figure 9a). Thus, as shown in Figure 9b, the maximum perturbations of solar radiation at the TOA (up to \(-\)8 W/m\({}^{2}\) or 2%), in the atmosphere (up to \(+\)29 W/m\({}^{2}\) or 11%), and at the Earth's surface (down to \(-\)31 W/m\({}^{2}\) or 12%) are observed at 12:00 UTC, when the available solar radiation is also maximum (1250 W/m\({}^{2}\), Figure 9a). It should be noted that the corresponding regional mean DOD and SSA do not exhibit a considerable diurnal variation (Figure S9). In general, the maximum DDREs occur in the second day of the DAEC (17 June 2016), when the regional mean DOD is also maximum (0.26, Figure S13). Negative (down to \(-\)9 W/m\({}^{2}\)) DDREs are estimated at the TOA, which means that the exported African dust produces a planetary cooling effect of the region, except for 12:00 UTC on the first day, when the TOA DDRE takes a small positive value (\(+\)1 W/m\({}^{2}\)), indicating a slight planetary warning over the region. Although the DDREs in the atmosphere and at the Earth's surface are maximum at noon, the TOA DDREs follow a different diurnal cycle with minimum values at noon and larger values in the early morning (06:00 UTC) or in the afternoon (15:00 UTC). The same diurnal variation was also found by [45] who used the WRF-Chem model to investigate the radiative impact of an extreme dust episode that took place in February 2015 over the central and eastern MB. However, the magnitude of DDREs found in [45] is greater (magnitudes up to 35 W/m\({}^{2}\) in the atmosphere, 48 W/m\({}^{2}\) at the surface, and 17 W/m\({}^{2}\) at TOA) than in the present study, mainly due to the fact that estimations in the other study were made for clear-sky conditions, opposite to the real all-sky conditions (with cloud fractions up to 1) considered here. It is interesting that the estimated regional mean perturbation of the net surface solar radiation at 12:00 UTC associated with the examined African dust export (\(-\)31 W/m\({}^{2}\) on 17 June 2016) largely exceeds the corresponding mean monthly total DRE (caused by all aerosol types) being equal to \(-\)21 W/m\({}^{2}\) in June [55]. As  
Figure 8: Vertical cross-sections of the buoyancy (vertical acceleration in m/s\({}^{2}\), (left column (i)) caused by dust aerosols, and the corresponding prevailing vertical wind speeds (in m/s, right column (ii)) along the slant path across the African dust export into the Mediterranean Basin (shown in Figure 5e, Figure 6e, and Figure 7e) during first (16 June 2016, (a)), second (17 June 2016, (b)), and third (18 June 2016, (c)) days of the dust episode that took place during 16–18 June 2016 over the Mediterranean Basin. The results are given at 12:00 UTC of each day. shown in Figure 9c, dust aerosols significantly perturb the regional solar radiation budget, by up to 12% at the surface, 11% in the atmosphere, and 2% at the TOA. Figure 9: Time series of the 3-hourly spatial mean SW fluxes (**a**), dust DREs (in W/m\({}^{2}\)) (**b**), and percent relative dust DREs with respect to the corresponding solar fluxes (**c**).