Synoptic Causes and Socio-Economic Consequences of a Severe Dust Storm in the Middle East

Nick Middleton,Mehdi Rahnama,Sahar Tajbakhsh Mosalman,Saviz Sehat Kashani,Sara Attarchi

doi:10.3390/atmos12111435

Nick Middleton, Mehdi Rahnama + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos12111435

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Abstract

Dust storms represent one of the most severe, if underrated, natural hazards in drylands. This study uses ground observational data from meteorological stations and airports (SYNOP and METARs), satellite observations (MODIS level-3 gridded atmosphere daily products and CALIPSO) and reanalysis data (ERA5) to analyze the synoptic meteorology of a severe Middle Eastern dust storm in April 2015. Details of related socio-economic impacts, gathered largely from news media reports, are also documented. This dust storm affected at least 14 countries in an area of 10 million km2. The considerable impacts were felt across eight countries in health, transport, education, construction, leisure and energy production. Hospitals in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE experienced a surge in cases of respiratory complaints and ophthalmic emergencies, as well as vehicular trauma due to an increase in motor vehicle accidents. Airports in seven countries had to delay, divert and cancel flights during the dust storm. This paper is the first attempt to catalogue such dust storm impacts on multiple socio-economic sectors in multiple countries in any part of the world. This type of transboundary study of individual dust storm events is necessary to improve our understanding of their multiple impacts and so inform policymakers working on this emerging disaster risk management issue.

Highlights

Dust storms are a characteristic feature of the climate of the Middle East, where major regions of wind erosion activity are located on the Tigris-Euphrates alluvial plains, the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, and southeastern Iran [1,2,3,4]
Desert dust presents a range of hazards to human society during its entrainment, transport and deposition [10] and the socio-economic impacts of dust storms can be classified as disasters according to the terminology adopted by the UN Office for disaster risk reduction (UNDRR), which defines a disaster as “a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society at any scale due to hazardous events interacting with conditions of exposure, vulnerability and capacity, leading to one or more of the following: human, material, economic and environmental losses and impacts” [11]
The severe dust storm that originated in the An Nafud Desert of Saudi Arabia on

Summary

Introduction

Dust storms are a characteristic feature of the climate of the Middle East, where major regions of wind erosion activity are located on the Tigris-Euphrates alluvial plains (eastern Syria, Iraq and the Iran–Iraq border), the deserts of the Arabian Peninsula, and southeastern Iran [1,2,3,4]. Desert dust transported by storms in the Middle East and Southwest Asia has effects on marine primary production [7], marine sediments of the Indian Ocean and adjacent seas [8] and the Indian summer monsoon [9]. There are few studies of how individual dust storm events impact multiple socio-economic sectors, and those dust events that have been examined in this way are entirely confined to effects in a single country [23,24,25,26,27], despite the fact that long-range transport of dust frequently crosses international boundaries [28,29,30,31,32]

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