Dust storms around the world
The worst dust storm in 70 years swept across eastern Australia this week, as winds picked up millions of tonnes of red dust from Australia's drought-ravaged interior and dumped it on the coast. This week meteorologists predicted that many more major dust storms would occur if climate change leads, as expected, to deeper droughts
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The Bradfield freeway, Sydney, on 23 September, 2009. Huge dust storms like the one which blanketed Sydney and turned the air red across much of eastern Australia this week are spreading epidemics and now reaching every country in the world, but could be absorbing climate change emissions, say scientists studying the little understood global phenomenon
Photograph: Brendon Thorne/Getty Images
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A runner passes a on Bondi Beach. Residents along Australia's east coast awoke to an orange, glowing sky as winds swept millions of tonnes of red dust from the country's drought-ravaged interior and dumped it on Sydney
Photograph: Paul Miller/EPA
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A huge dust cloud rolls over the Australian town of Griffith, 400km (248 miles) south-west of Sydney in 2002. Australia is in the grip of a 10-year-old drought that has been widely attributed to climate change and is turning large parts of the interior of Australia into a giant dust bowl
Photograph: Jamie Alexander/AP
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Red dust trapped in a spider's web, Sydney, Australia
Photograph: Newspix/Rex Features
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Dust storms are not a new phenomenon - this image, from 1955, shows a huge dust storm raging over a desolate Texas farm. Most dust storms are linked to long droughts, exacerbated by human activities like overgrazing and deforestation
Photograph: Joseph Scherschel/Getty Images
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A dust cloud envelops the Saudi Arabian capital, Riyadh, in March 2009. This week meteorologists predicted that many more major dust storms would occur if climate change leads, as expected, to deeper droughts
Photograph: AFP
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A satellite image from May this year shows a thick band of dust snaking across the Red Sea
Photograph: Aqua/MODIS/NASA
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Dust blows across the Mediterranean from North Africa and across Sicily to western Greece. Dust blown from the Sahara desert reaches north of the Alps approximately once a month, according to the World Meteorological Organisation
Photograph: Goddard Space Flight Center/NASA
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An enormous dust cyclone swirls over north-eastern China (the northern Korean peninsula is bottom centre). The cyclonic cloud is actually pushing a wall of dust, which covers the land beneath, and even over some of the clouds. Witnesses report that it was as dark as night, and dust was pushed as far as the Great Lakes of North America
Photograph: Aqua?Modis/NASA
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A Chinese farmer walks amid a heavy sand storm in Minqin county, in China's Gansu province. Northern China, parts of the US, the Sahel in Africa, the Middle East and Australia are all prone to severe dust storms which routinely travel thousands of miles and on occasion have been found to travel twice round the world in the upper atmosphere. Chinese scientists have linked the increasingly severe storms of the last decade to massive deforestation and over-exploited water resources in southern and eastern China
Photograph: China Daily/AP
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Carving in the Forbidden City in Beijing, China, is covered with a layer of dust, blown from a sandstorm which hit the China-Mongolia border in April 2009. Residents found their homes, streets and cars covered in brown dust. Residents were advised to stay indoors or wear masks when going out
Photograph: China Photos/Getty Images
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Kerzaz, Algeria. The sandstorm season in the Sahara runs from March to April. The range of Saharan dust storms, which mostly start in Chad, can carry fine dust across the Atlantic to the Caribbean and the US. They have increased dramatically since the 1950s, causing massive topsoil loss and reducing food supplies in Niger, Chad, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso
Photograph: Kazuyoshi Nomachi/Corbis
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An orange tree covered in sand and dust in Baghdad, Iraq, in July. Sand storms, the strongest and densest in years, have plagued the country this summer. The country, which is in the middle of a three-year drought, experienced 18 days of dust storms
Photograph: Ali Al-saadi/AFP/Getty Images)
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Yemen, 2003. A boy riding a donkey is almost swallowed by a sandstorm in Wadi Mur
Photograph: Christophe Boisvieux/Corbis
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Mali, 2001. A tree weathers a sandstorm. The Sahara desert is a key source of dust storms, particularly in the area covering Mauritania, Mali, and Algeria
Photograph: Remi Benali/Corbis
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Mali, 2001. Women caught in a sand storm. Dust storms cause soil loss - in particular the loss of the nutrient-rich lightest particles - reducing agricultural productivity
Photograph: Remi Benali/Corbis
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An young Afghan refugee hides behind a tent from a dust storm in Kabul on in October, 2008
Photograph: Manpreet Romana/AFP
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The Mittens, Monument Valley, during a sandstorm along the Utah-Arizona border
Photograph: Bill Hatcher/NG/Getty Images
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Continuing an intermittent pattern from the previous month, more dust plumes blew off Argentina's coast in February, forming slight arcs that move in a counter-clockwise direction over the Atlantic Ocean. This part of Argentina is also known as Patagonia, with arid landscapes sculpted by relentless winds. The dry conditions were exacerbated in early 2009 by the worst drought in a generation. The source of the plumes appears to be an agricultural region north of Golfo San Matias
Photograph: Terra/MODIS/NASA
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May, 1992. View from the space shuttle Endeavour of a huge dust storm in the Sahara desert, which covered hundred of miles in Libya and Algeria.
Photograph: NASA/Corbis
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