Three weeks after the last one, a new cloud of sand from the Sahara is expected from this Sunday.
Enough to question the frequency of these episodes which seem to be getting closer and closer together.
According to a recent study, this is not just an impression, especially since 2020.
Follow the full coverage
Our planet
The dust from the Sahara has already returned to France. Three weeks after the passage of a cloud of desert sand, a new episode is expected from this Sunday, April 28. “The South and the East” from France “should be affected with a peak at the beginning of next week for the very end of April”, anticipates meteorologist Guillaume Séchet on X, relying on the Skiron forecast tool.
This phenomenon happens as far as France in the event of a storm in the Sahara, when the southerly wind carries the desert sand with it to French territory. Thus, the sky changes, during this sandy episode, in color and turns to ocher-orange. If these episodes seem more and more frequent in recent years, to the point of becoming almost common, a study recently showed that it is not just an impression.
More numerous since 2020
According to data relayed by the Copernicus organization in February 2024, notably from a pre-publication written by a group of Spanish researchers, atmospheric circulation has changed and is more conducive to the arrival of sand clouds in Western Europe. .
In more detail, according to the latter, the number of sand clouds crossing Western Europe has significantly increased between 2020 and 2022, compared to previous years until 2003. This increased occurrence is observed especially during the months of February and March, some of these sand rises being even qualified as exceptional with “a duration never observed before”.
-
Read also
Is the Sahara sand cloud made up of “heavy metals” and elements “used to modify the weather”?
But how to explain it? The increasingly high temperatures in the Mediterranean regions and the persistent drought in the Maghreb are one of the advanced factors, these conditions being conducive to favoring the lifting of sand to make it travel easily.
The group of Spanish researchers also studies some of the factors of atmospheric circulation. “Cutoff depressions, located between the subtropical eastern North Atlantic and the western Mediterranean, and downstream high pressure systems, trigger a large number of winter dust episodes over the Euro-Mediterranean region Western”, explains the main author of the study, Emilio Cuevas, of the Spanish meteorological service AEMET. “The type of anticyclonic systems varies from case to case, often involving high-latitude blocks, but also subtropical ridges, which were quite common during the 2020-2022 winter dust event,” specifies his colleague and co-author, David Barriopedro, from the Institute of Geosciences (IGEO).
Note that an analysis dating from 2021 estimated that the frequency of satellite observations of dust had doubled during the period 2005-2019.
