Click. Play. And play dust storms are scourge of modern life in much of the world in order to produce a dust storm and you need wind and you need soil particles cammarata in this film we look at malta dust storm needs dust storm is actually when the visibility is less than a kilometer. And how human activity is making them was plain we focus on the middle east side being called one of the walls was to see place during the dust storm season and patients get severe attacks of us and thats required hospital admission and intensive care. Well see how nasa satellites can track dust storms as they sweep across the globe the dust to lift it up to three or four miles in altitude before its really kind of scurried away by the limbs plane every year the current estimate is anywhere from two to five billion metric tons that moves around some just as a nurse. It was for every year so thats quite a bit of dust. Just isnt always bad scientists are researching the impact of dust crossing the ocean from africa to florida i think the fact that we can see these impacts are far away is really exciting. So in the rain forest we need the plants to ride their nutrients in a fertilised from dust in kuwait theyre pioneering new ways of tackling the problem of dust storms this dunston come to the north and negative effects of the. Well Technology Brings the prospect of daily dust storms full cost. So he says this time the storm Warning System will be on your own as the worlds climate becomes more extreme scientists such an action. It is the number one killer the number one Communicable Disease that we are trying to tackle today. Is coming your way its a case of are you going to be suffocating to. Dust storms are frightening and dangerous they can occur without warning bringing transport to a standstill and disrupting dating life. About to be called dust can make people sick and it can kill. Sand and dust generated in dry regions across the wild but the greatest source is the so hard as it. The sorrow probably produces run by the hoff something or other with all the earths dust and the reason its there is because theres a no go like it was the wind conditions are wetter thats dried up. And its the material from the floor about old like silk and little silica organisms called diatoms to get blown away high up into the air and can travel huge distances. Theres a range of countries primarily neighboring the sahara because this is the major source of sand and dust storms both to the north and south but equally to the east where were talking of iraq iran syria kuwait the emirates the gulf states saudi arabia but increasingly moving to the east we run into the stands as we call in afghanistan to man a star and here the difficulty is that theyre affected in both directions sand and dust being driven to the south from the gobi desert from the Tibetan Plateau and also through asia so theres a whole range of countries with a long plume starting from the western edge of the sahara all the way through and up to china. Dust just been blowing around the world for millennia dust storms are a natural phenomenon but the world is getting hotter and in many places dryer. Scientists see clear evidence that human activity is making dust storms while the Science Behind the storms is fascinating we think that twenty to twenty five percent could be attributed to human activity so something called the dust bowl syndrome which is associated with poor Land Management where the topsoil becomes aerosolize like tiny tiny little aerosols which means that the slightest amount of energy or wind can lift up the soil and effectively take those tops of those many thousands of kilometers. Roaring thing is a bank across america and crap that. We had a big phenomena or tragedy called the dust bowl of the United States in the nineteenth thirtys. The american dustbowl is famous as a human induced environmental disaster. In the one nine hundred twenty s. And thirtys crops were planted on newly created farms on form across lands but drought and over farming on poor soils meant the crops failed year after year. With no vegetation thousands of tons of soil blew away creating choking storms of dust for days on end. How did it happen some unusually what people here made people think that water is available and you can flow anywhere you like and water would follow and this was the dominant thinking. In the dust bowl primarily was due to a drop in rainfall in the area at the same time he meant population was migrating in use in that area for agricultural purposes. And they were doing strip farming of the top souls and in leaving im exposed. Farms were abandoned and people were forced to leave their homes for good. And the dust storms got so bad because of there it drove legislation in one nine hundred thirty five to pass a small Conservation Act Congress passed and that prohibited that type of farming. And the big driver of why its a very. The dust storms dropped over time was because it started raining in. The americans instituted various things like shelter belts and windbreaks which really dampened done the dust storm activity in the one nine hundred forty s. And on with us and that does show that we can do something about it if we wish in the right circumstances. Today the middle east is one of the areas worst affected by dust storms its in the path of sand and dust blowing from the sun harra but the region itself is increasingly becoming a source of dust decreasing rainfall combined with the over use of water for agriculture making the soil dangerously dry. Why dont we get dust storms any time we have wind because we have higher soil moisture. The soil moisture acts like a glue it keeps the soil particles. Connected to each other so the wind cannot lift them as soon as you lose the weight sure you disconnect these particles and these particles. Are blown away easily whenever you have a wait so when you have a drought when you have stronger winds and when you lose your soil moisture you have a dust. Theres now a thirty year record of precipitation and soil moisture measurements. The maps on the left show drought as measured by rainfall across the middle east the maps on the right shows soil moisture blue is wetter than average brown drier than average the annual precipitation and overall soil moisture have to creased meanwhile dust storms have increased. Your labor. Day job pretty good im not going to do other. Than i am and. We have seen in middle east and north africa more and more frequent dust storms and one of the reasons is that Water Resources in the region have become more scarce. Nations the wont over see the control of malta as key to growth and prosperity middle Eastern Countries have ambitious programs to build dams and water pipelines for Drinking Water crop irrigation and hydroelectric power iran alone has built over five hundred times for some period after the revolution of one nine hundred seventy nine was one of the biggest dam builders and in the war first this was advertised as a symbol of power as a symbol of independence as a symbol of Development Everyone is proud about doing things like this but in a short period after this move for building dams we see a country into a serious water crisis and a lot of issues coming up. Turkey has had a massive long term project to harness the tigris and euphrates rivers which starts in turkey and flow through neighboring syria and iran. The us into completed in one nine hundred ninety two and a source of Huge National pride is one of the largest in the. One third of the euphrates form a flow is now diverted for irrigation and. Turkeys latest project is the on the river tigris. When completed. It was something much the ancient city of has some. Whose history goes back Twelve Thousand years. Once people traveled on the tigris from head to nineveh mosul and babylon. Theyre all International Agreements promising syria and iraq a minimum amount of water. But inevitably the volume of water flowing downstream will be decreased. And most of this water goes into agriculture so we have one to irrigate and produce food and in a dry air so the amount of water we have in middle east is enough for for satisfying our drinking and sanitation needs its not enough to produce food with it or make the region selfsufficient in food for adoption but this is something that the region has not understood well. Now if you draw your soil if you use a lot of water and waste a lot of water then you should expect a punishment which is called a dust store and thats something we have been punished for in the middle east because of not using water properly because of losing soil moisture. Or the ability to build. One example of the consequences of poor Water Management as neko tonia in around. The lake the largest in the middle east one supported wildlife and a tourist industry. With no outflow its water became many times saltier than the oceans since the completion of dams restricting the inflow of water make our own now has shrunk dramatically the. Lady who music is a good example of the modern me by mental tragedy that was created by humans we had a salt lake which was one of the largest in the new board the dominant thinking was that all rivers are flowing into the lake this Terminal Lake which has no effect with water gets salty lets use the water for a good purpose lets use it for farming lets use it for the urban areas what happened was that you know let water go in and there is evaporation the lake got smaller salt is on its bed and then when you get when the salt is below and it becomes a big disaster that the whole region has been affected by and now a lot of investments should be made in order to restore the lake if that is not only a dream. Sediments or a very fine soils and once they dry out their easily mobilised into the atmosphere and some of the dustiest regions in the planet are usually due to drought. Lakebeds good example United States and the early Twentieth Century the city of los angeles tapped lake owens as a source for Drinking Water and a short time later that lake was dry or almost totally dry and to this day it is number one source of dust in the atmosphere in north america. Q eight this city lives under the shadow of dust storms with around twenty one here. In summer almost every day people are breathing in dusty air. Kuwait is in the main pathway of winds bringing dust it blows in from the sun harra in the west and in summer the schimmel winds from the northwest bring dust from syria and iraq. It is one of the worst effect in the region and most of the tajik to his of dust storms are busting through kuwait and dr ali al disorient Research Team know all about dust from firsthand experience dust builds up on cars and windows and on other surfaces such as solar panels and its getting was they got amount of dust increased focus on the amount of dust at least some from two thousand five hundred to one hundred twenty tons better quit. Now its reached the top of two thousand and eleven which is at three hundred seventy tons because elsewhere so a huge amount of dust has been deposited. Inhaling all of this stuff that has serious consequences associated with hyundai have a great impact on human health. Its very bad for you to breathe in following silica dust it carries allen germs which can you know be fungal spores with bacteria which can affect you and cause hospital issues or even death. Dr ahmed is an allergy specialist and consultant at the q a child and allergy clinic. Most of his patients suffer from the affects of dust an application of what the dust affects all people every god of the genetic predisposition and when you think about the air in kuwait the air in kuwait is full of dust as well as chemicals that come from the oil industry as well that comes from pollution from cars as of the same time you have a lot of pollen. In that if so if you like you can say you had a cocktail of of chemicals into that here. In almost one in five of kuwaits residents suffer from asthma. People live with the condition year round but dont see a spike in admissions when the dust storms arise. During the dust storm season the number of patients visiting our clinic increases to double the usual day and some of them they get severe attacks that requires hospital admission and and tensing. Q. H. Resident. Has suffered from dust related as much for fifteen years. While one of the house that ditto i was told my ass snow was caused by the air. It makes me feel constricted when i breath i have difficulty speaking it feels like my airways are tightening up sharply i cant breathe normally out here let me. The good news for me its not just a seasonal allergies like some people think the condition stays with you all the time. We do that occasionally you cant function. Passages close up secular we are further down you have to take medication or you wont be able to breathe if you dont youll suffer constantly want them. President miri show some of the measures kuwaitis used to try to prevent dust particles getting into their homes. And then had a month on a second here were now standing in a residential area and looking at the waste land over there it feels like youre out in the desert i did and this is where our houses that is you know you try to plant some extra greenery on the surrounding land here or and why youve got various types of trees and plants like meant for example. That we use these plants in our cooking but theyre also there to help with the dust because there are less trapped the dust thats narrative and give us a bit more protection from it when a storm comes. So that way theres not so much dust in the air for us to breathe in. Our. Weve got a fountain at the entrance of the house its for decoration but its also there to catch the dust against the dust. Of what. Countries across the world see an increase in hospital admissions because of her spirit problems the very young and the very old a particularly vulnerable. For them poor air quality can be life threatening. Nearly seven Million People dying prematurely because of the air quality much of which is a complex mix. The dust that has got pollutants carried with it means that it is the number one killer number one nonCommunicable Diseases that we are trying to tackle today. Tracking q eight dr alice ariz team collect dust for analysis from nearly fifty sites across the country. Dust is complex material its chemical and mineral composition varies depending on where it comes from these variations have a bearing on its Health Impact the size of dust particles is key and assessing their impact on health the kuwaiti scientists measure the size range by looking at the light scattered when a laser beam is shown through the sample. The size of the particle is very important and causing a disparity problems. Eighty five percent of dust size in kuwait is ten micro meters and thats the size that usually cause respiratory complaint and exacerbation of us. When we breathe in dust particles smaller than ten micro meters the pm ten particles become lodged in the lungs causing breathing difficulties even smaller particles pm two point five can actually cross directly into our bloodstream. These small particles which interfere with the gas exchanges. And result to severe this but its the diseases. Scientists that institutions across the world are doing further tests that the analysis. Clerical carol is a mineralogist at the university of sheffield in the u. K. She leads a Laboratory Study in soil and dust particles but now is the dust under a scanning electron microscope and on a moment. When my confined place three hundred times the scale bar on this image is fifty microns from the suit these principles are really really very small only have some individual ones but they also glimmering all together. In big clumps so you can see this whole different distribution of sizes some of them by small and some of. The chemical elements can also be identified by the microscope ok so this is all elements will not add anything else some just an eye out of it to the individual elements so his other original sample is just the right bright spots. And im not right on school seems to correspond to some lets have which may be present as a heavy metal in the sample the other things that would go present all magnesium. Will say Silicon Valley menuhin how see him and the small amount inside of it says well and you can see that some of these are very well correlated so for example aluminum and so that can occur in the same location. Finding leds in just one small sample could be a one off but many of the other elements are commonly present. The dust isnt purely mineral sticking to these particles there may be material such as pollen and bacteria. Studies show that these contaminants can make breathing problems was when you go into the desert and you know you you look at you you see a lot of dirt in topsoil and you you dont see any growth. No trees no brush no anything and you think its sterile well its not even in the most a habitable regions if you reach down you pick between your index finger in your thumb i would be about a gram of topsoil you would have anywhere from ten thousand to a billion bacterial cells. Dust is clearly a major house and so theres an urgent need to understand the behavior of dust storms to. Help people cope with their impact. War three to. Start with. One of the best ways to study dust storms is by satellites orbiting the. People didnt understand the intensity and how far these storms could move until we had satellite imagery. And nasa has over twenty earth observing satellites that are monitoring constantly different components of the energy in water and currents using satellites were able to get a global picture of the land surface and different components of the land surface for example you can monitor the type and amount of vegetation in addition you can also tell how wet yes well is by using microwaves so if you know how wet surfaces and you have a better idea of the intensity interation and locations or potential customers. Masses go to space center is the Largest Organization in the world monitoring the earth the soda system and the universe. Ten thousand people and several hundred scientists specialize in the community. With the information satellites gather from the land sea and as scientists build computer models that help them simulate cost and future conditions. Talk to the zoo conoco is one of the team studying particles in the atmosphere so this is an animation from a global earth system model that we run here at nasa. What were simulating in this are the distributions of what we call aerosols or particles in the atmosphere and the different colors. Represent different kinds of these particles and they come from all kinds of different sources so the blue colors are from sea spray thats blown up by the winds at the surface of the sea the greener colors come from smoke sources and so there we have individual fires that are going off in the model and emitting smoke into the atmosphere and its transported over long distances the whiter colors correspond to what we call anthropogenic pollutants so things that come from power plants or car emissions and so you can see places especially in china or on the east coast of the United States or even in europe where a lot of these pollutants are emitted and transported and then finally the writer colors that we have correspond to dust storms and so in that case what were looking at is the effect of the surface winds blowing across a region that has a lot of fine particles that can be blown up into the air and blown by the winds of a very long distances. Using models like this help scientists understand whats happening in the earths atmosphere. All the projects concentrate on collecting actual data about atmospheric particles dr robert levy has been working on a long time global aerosol rapoport. So this is so that the time series of from the motive of light we are trying to create global observations of aerosol these are not modeled either based on camera like images how it works is satellites measure light reflected from the earth and you can see that theres places on the globe where you see lots of aerosol which is a bright orange color and you can see the hot spots around the globe you see the dust in africa biomass burning in the amazon. What we dont have from a satellite is exactly what its made out of and you can get a sense of what kind it is if its dust smoke pollution one place that you do see least in the fifteen year record we have is there seems to be an increase in the middle east along the the Arabian Peninsula and in that region and it seems to be a significant increase. Now says studies backup what people on the ground can see for themselves because they wanted to actually. Let me get these satellite studies are now being put to practical news. Nasa shows its data with other Research Groups who are developing a global sand and dust storm early Warning System. This form a church in the spanish city of boston mona is now well center for science. The interior is taken up by the massive mary nostrum three supercomputer used by Research Scientists across the walked. One project is to predict dust storms in this case for europe the middle east and north africa. The role of the force want somebody to provide every day found on the north africa itll be. The cost or cost forecast that is very similar to what was the case but also the weaker right based on what i. Want less when youre going to have more or less cost is how much basically what were producing our three day. This is a full cost from the boss alone a group for three. Days in june twenty sixth seen. The high concentrations a yellow and brown. But the resolution and accuracy audit up to the standard all detail of weather for costs. In fact are those that require an even more computing time than what we would require its only by having them cheap like the ones we have i think were going to want if we dont. End up not only the dutch biggest themselves with us i think the management of the deeds of these will be with you but you seem to be or you are in the fight. They dont know if hes. The boss alone or a nasa scientists know their full cost will be helped if they had better local data from the countries concerned the other thing that we need to bring in is more data that comes from the ground that will help us refine things like the maps that we use for our dust sources and even have them evolving over time by including some information about vegetation and economics and how that will influence things like dust sources feed me feel. More makes Data Collection impossible. Conflicts in iraq and more recently syria have actually watched some of the problem of dust storms came and the energies of the people consumed by conflict i survival. A hit. Man the problem that we have in our region is the conflicts the instability the ongoing law and then some terrorism feed. That is either of a do the situation feel. Unfortunately a lot of the tracked vehicles in the driving or the desert surface by the come back yet. Has disturbed the desert served us and made it worse. The poor activities especially in iraq and syria because of huge amount of fission have been destroyed im talking about native fish which make new sources of dust. There in the past. If we have a dos a song generated in a place like syria and iraq it is very different from dos a song which is generated from place law and why are you worried because in places like iraq and syria we have had conflicts for years so we have toxic elements which could be attached to the surface in. The Barcelona Team charted a rise in dust levels across the wider region from two thousand to two thousand and twelve. Blue shows winter months green shows some. Scientists have also observed an increase in temperature in the middle east over the past eighty years. And over the same period a decrease in rainfall. Even before the walls these conditions were damaging particularly for agriculture many farms on. The gulf on one city so theres a lot of land. Disputes in the ocean what with the forests of fields these are now exposed. Syria wasnt before a source and yet now its. Just. The area between douglas mountains and the tigris river we found a huge amount because this was affected by war if it is multiple war activities so drained farms and abundant farms became a huge source of dust in fact from this region. The city of us in who is a stand southwestern iran is now one of the most polluted cities on the planet partly because of dust blowing in from iraq. The marshlands in southern iraq address the affecting all our western southwestern cities like i was. Part of it is also coming from neighboring countries hard coming from the hot spots that we have inside the country the areas which are crawling to soil erosion. Only to sectors twenty four to ten was hit by a spectacular dust. Five people were killed and thirty injured flights were councillors there were numerous Car Accidents in the city was plunged into darkness. When this happens in a Nations Capital people take notice. As well as the social impact the Economic Cost of events like this is devastating. Economists calculate the dust storms cost the middle east and north africa around twelve billion u. S. Dollars every year. So theres a pressing need for practical remedies or anything another. One of the first priorities is to tackle disaster for keisha. In kuwait sorrys team are experimenting with native doesnt plans to try to stabilize the soil. These drought tolerant plants have extensive root systems which help prevent soil from blowing away this is really our area it was a pretty area in the boston quit though it is prohibited in question two thousand and three so all the quarters was dumped and zeal for detention was in this area before now areas rehabilitated the game by using native plants in order to form a very good native life in the region. Weve planted about one hundred ten thousand native plants in the area music native ground captured huge amount of dust. Around the plant it wasnt there before so this. Simmons is formed by the dust and sand transported by wind its contents a lot of nutrients that fish up to ninety percent of organic matter that inside it this plants for example we see it is common name is called the especially good one in fact in cutting the sun a little blond to talk to we see a tear this one is another branch called shall we this this. It wasnt there before so this blobs capture the amount of sand and dust and come to do is pick the negative effect of. Sand and dust this is the single blunt what if its thousand difference. Sussan light data can also play a role in improving land and Water Management. In twenty fifteen nasa launched a new satellite. The satellite makes direct measurements of the soil moisture every few days. You understand how much waters in the land surface that can really help you forecasting and monitoring droughts and floods what were seeing here the red and yellow colors represent precipitation and the orange and blue colors are the changes and so when we share in the average blue colors represent whether areas and red colors represent drier areas so if you have a direct observation of the amount of more sure in the land surface and you can improve your understanding of the amount of moisture in the root zone thats a very very important variable for improving your understanding of crops. Even that it will salute you. You know as good as most in the. To fund words. To People Living in dust storm areas new technology could help nowadays its possible to check the dust for costs online. These phone calls from the boss and on a website all part of the global early Warning System there updated daily it provides a map with details off doest concentration in the middle east and north africa if you zooming around syria and saddam part of iran we see a high concentration of dogs the yellow color shows higher concentration the dark brown is really hard concentration off to us he she is beyond well beyond limits so you can see what happens every hour in next seventy two hours the full costs of becoming ever more accurate. In future they could help airports schools and Emergency Services to plan ahead. Remember. Atmospheric dust has always been with us and there are some benefits. This is a very positive impacts from dust storms blowing around the planet many of the soils in the caribbean islands the clays came from north africa and it enabled the precolumbian indians to build plate clay pottery and without that dust blowing across and building up in the soils that the clay wouldnt be in the caribbean you what you want fine. Dust also contains valuable nutrients for plants. So when the rain forest from north africa the dust flows over it goes into south america during the north northern hemispheres winter and moves down in there and many of the plants derive their nutrients and are fertilized from the west in the same with asian dust blown across fertilizers some of the northern why. Island rain forests and sustains them so there are some very positive things. Science can play a part in understanding predicting and preventing dust storms this knowledge the needs to be used by policymakers. Were very good in developing technologies for launching satellites and doing things but when it comes to policy things many times we act stupidly we become stupid we dont understand the realities on the ground over dont care about the long term consequences of our policy. Very very committed to set a cation is something that we need to tackle at a very difficult level and its monday muslins planting trees using proper irrigation making sure that we have a vegetative cover that avoids to aerosolize ation of the tops of the foot. Before thought is an awful phenomenon is always going to be there. After the fox cutoff were discussed or different regions but we can do a lot with broncos which. They still have time to start in the us but not of that size because they have better plans because its the same as to have to be the least couple other counties to make this a multinational home problem and he needs a multinational should lucius with countries indonesian have to come together and solve this problem. Dust storms are part of a wider environmental call them the wars on conflicts of the region will eventually be over when they are the environmental problems wanted to own the land. Sharing heritage. The caribbean year of Cultural Heritage twenty eighteen come. Young people from all over europe are performing Benjamin Britten war requiem. Thirty minutes. If you will be our fighters want to start families to become farmers or engineers everyone of them as a planet innocently and children. Sending us kiss on the children who have always been the land and those that will follow are part of a new kind of. They could be the future of. Granting opportunities global news that matters d. W. Made some lines. The dangerous battle for images five women. Five exceptional stories. One calling more photography dramatic pictures from the frontlines capturing streets full moments in time and even risking death. She gave her life to other stories of people who ended up killing. Women more photographers starting research on g. W. Business d w news live from berlin a Syrian Rebel Group says more than forty people have been killed in a chemical attack in eastern. This footage of people receiving treatment in the last rebel held town dumas it was posted on social media the rebels blame the government and say the death toll is likely to rise the outside regime calling the allegations a fabrication and also coming up was it murder suicide or was there a political motive for police in the german city of mentor are now scrambling to
comparemela.com © 2020. All Rights Reserved.