Investigation of dust storms and its affecting factors in The Middle East to take all necessary actions for mitigation of climate change

Authors

1 Assistant Professor Atmospheric Science and, Meteorological Research center (ASMERC), Tehran,Iran

2 PhD student Atmospheric Science and, Meteorological Research center (ASMERC), Tehran,Ira

Abstract

Climate change affects all regions around the world and increase some extreme events. Also climate change threatens the Middle East so much. Severe droughts in this region with anthropogenic changes cause heavy sand and dust storms. In this study, dust phenomenon has been investigated in The Middle East during 10 years (from 2009 to 2018) from different perspectives. GOCART model dust flux output shows that the maximum amount of dust flux was in the southeast of Saudi Arabia, southeast of Iraq, region on the borders between Iraq and Syria, western half of Turkmenistan, parts of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Also dust flux was seen in the north coast of Persian Gulf, Oman Sea and borders between Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Also AI pattern is very similar to dust flux pattern and Index EVI was low in a vast areas of The Middle East that shows deficiency of vegetation cover in that areas. In the other hand, mean annual cumulative precipitation is less than 250 mm in the vast parts of study areas.

Keywords


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