New research underscores the close relationship between dust plumes transported from the Sahara Desert in Africa and rainfall from tropical cyclones along the U.S. Gulf Coast and Florida.
New research underscores the close relationship between dust plumes transported from the Sahara Desert in Africa and rainfall from tropical cyclones along the U.S. Gulf Coast and Florida.
Giant plumes of Sahara Desert dust that gust across the Atlantic can suppress hurricane formation over the ocean and affect weather in North America.
But thick dust plumes can also lead to heavier rainfall – and potentially more destruction – from landfalling storms, according to a July 24 study in Science Advances. The research shows a previously unknown relationship between hurricane rainfall and Saharan dust plumes.
“Surprisingly, the leading factor controlling hurricane precipitation is not, as traditionally thought, sea surface temperature or humidity in the atmosphere. Instead, it’s Sahara dust,” said the corresponding author Yuan Wang, an assistant professor of Earth system science at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
Read more at Stanford University
Image: On June 16, 2020, the GOES-East satellite captured this GeoColor imagery of an expansive plume of dust from the Sahara Desert traveling westward across the Atlantic Ocean. (Creidt: NOAA)
