Massive Saharan dust plume over Spain… What goes up… Dear Eos, In mid-March 2022, a de
Massive Saharan dust plume over Spain… What goes up… Dear Eos, In mid-March 2022, a decade-high extensive plume of Saharan dust covered southern, western and central Europe in a haze of orange-red dust for 2-3 days. Strong winds from the Storm “Celia” brewing off the northwest coast of Africa picked up dust from the Sahara Desert, and southerly winds wafted this massive dust plume across the Mediterranean Sea towards Europe (https://www.ventusky.com/?p=39.3;-3.9;5&l=dust&t=20220316/1200). Newspapers covered this spectacular weather event accompanied by stunning real-time satellite imageries (e.g., https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/16/weather/saharan-dust-europe/index.html). Airborne dust was particularly pronounced in southern Spain, and the Spanish Sierra Nevada mountain range disappeared from its usual crystal-clear view from the city of Granada in a haze of orange-red. However, what goes up must come down. Indeed, the usually white snowcapped peaks of the Sierra Nevada turned brown due to wide-spread dust fall from 14-16 March. So how was it on the ground during the dust fall, and what implications do intense and large-scale episodic events like these have for dust-receiving ecosystems near and far? Beyond the immediate effects of dust-induced poor air quality on human and animal health – everything in southern Spain (landscapes, houses, cars) became covered in a layer of dust – there are well-known longer-term impacts of such Saharan dust transport events to the productivity of ecosystems ranging from the Mediterranean to Amazonia (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/mar/22/how-saharan-dust-clouds-that-turn-skies-orange-also-nourish-nature). Clockwise from the upper left in the photo collage of view of the dust event from the ground in southern Spain: Approaching dust storm in Vera, Almeria, on the Mediterranean in March 14; View of the Alhambra in Granada on February 1(a clear dust -free day) and on March 15 (in the mid-March dust storm); Mud accumulation on a balcony, curb-side, upon vehicles and the regional river Río Genil that turned red following overnight rain in Granada on March 16; A house and surroundings in rural Andalusia (65 km NE of Granada city) with the grounds turned red by mud fall, walls turned reddish-brown, and the terrace caked in mud following rain on March 16; Mud collected from the terrace using clean collection tools and vessels for running bioassay experiments on the impact of Saharan dust on the ecology of sensitive oligotrophic high-mountain lakes in Sierra Nevada at the University of Granada. Terrestrial and marine ecologists and biogeochemists should seek to quantify the impact of persistent and low-level as well as episodic and intense inter-continental dust transport and deposition in shaping the long-term productivity of receiving oceanic and terrestrial ecosystems – including the year-round fertility of agro-ecosystems in the Mediterranean basin. – Bopi Biddanda, Juanma Medina-Sánchez, Mani Villar-Argaiz, Guille Garrido-Cañete, and Presentación Carrillo, Annis Water Resources Institute, Grand Valley State University, Michigan, and Departamento de Ecología and Instituto del Agua, Universidad de Granada, Spain. https://www.gvsu.edu/wri/, http://ecologia.ugr.es/, http://www.institutodelagua.es -- source link