Satellite tracking shows dust suppresses hurricanes
Two days after a major dust storm struck northern Africa on February 23, 2006, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) flying onboard the Terra satellite captured this image of the dust over the Mediterranean Sea. The pale beige cloud of dust extends several hundred kilometers. On the island of Cyprus, the Troödos Mountains, including the 1,951-meter-high (6,400-foot-high) summit of Mount Olympos, rise above the dust cloud. (NASA image courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC)
DB: Dust storms from Africa might suppress tropical storms and hurricanes in the Atlantic.
JB: That’s according to research led by Jason Dunion, a meteorologist with NOAA’s Hurricane Research Division. Dunion told Earth & Sky about new infrared satellite imagery that tracks Saharan dust storms across the Atlantic ocean.
Jason Dunion: And what we’re starting to learn is that when hurricanes, or seedlings for hurricanes, interact with these dust storms, they tend to weaken.
DB: Dunion analyzed over 20 years of images showing atmospheric dust blowing off of the Sahara desert, and compared that to hurricane and storm activity.
Jason Dunion: One thing that we’ve found is that about 60%, over half of the hurricanes and tropical storms that affect us in the Atlantic actually come from, they originate over Africa, as what we call tropical waves. You can kind of think of those as the seedlings for future hurricanes. So what we’ve started to do is study these dust storms that are interacting with these seedlings over Africa. So there’s a real close connection to the storms that we later see, that might take seven to ten days for these seedlings to arrive over towards the United States.
JB: Tracking live dust storms, Dunion said, will allow hurricane hunter aircraft to more easily find and monitor conditions where young hurricanes meet dust.
DB: Thanks today to NASA : explore, discover, understand. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth & Sky.
Our thanks to:
Jason Dunion
Meteorologist
Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory
Hurricane Research Division
NOAA
Miami, FL
Additional Teacher Resources
NOAA: Tiny Dust Specks Could Have Big Effect on Hurricanes
Scientists are finding that Saharan Dust Storms containing tiny specks of dust are linked to suppressed hurricane activity in the Atlantic. This article provides information on this topic as well as satellite images of dust from space.
NASA: Did Dust Bust the 2006 Hurricane Season Forecasts?
This article provides information on a NASA study that suggests that tiny dust particles may have foiled forecasts that the 2006 hurricane season would be another active one. The article includes images and graphs.
