2023-10-21 03:22:01
GENEVA – South America and the Caribbean are among the regions that may be most affected by sandstorms that negatively impact the economy and the health of the populations, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) warned in its new bulletin this Thursday the 19th.
Sand and dust storms “have impacts on health, transportation, including aviation and road and rail transportation, and agriculture. This affects public health and safety and economies,” said WMO Secretary General Petteri Taalas.
Exposure to dust particles is associated with adverse health effects such as myocardial infarction, cardiovascular mortality, lung cancer, and the infection known as valley fever, present in the western United States.
These storms also reduce the performance of solar plants and spread pathogens, which negatively impacts local and regional economies. On the American continent, the loss of soil nutrients costs agriculture more than $8 billion a year.
According to the entity’s report, the world average of annual average surface dust concentrations in 2022 was slightly higher than in 2021, due to the increase in emissions from west-central Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Iranian Plateau and northwest China.
Hotspots with markedly higher dust concentrations were detected in Central and South America, Central Africa, Spain, the Red Sea, the Arabian Peninsula, the Iranian Plateau, the Bay of Bengal, South Asia, northwest China and the Atlantic Ocean. tropical between West Africa and the Caribbean.
Every year, some 2 billion tons of dust enter the atmosphere, darkening the skies and deteriorating air quality in regions that can be thousands of kilometers away, and affecting economies, ecosystems, weather and climate. climate.
“To a large extent this is a natural process, although much of it is the result of inadequate management of water and land resources,” indicates the WMO.
The organization is developing its “Early Warnings for All” initiative, with which it aims to improve the degree of accuracy in existing predictions and warning services regarding dust storms.
“We promote the concept of multi-hazard early warning services to bring all hazards under one framework, and impact-based prediction is at the heart of improving sand and dust storm warnings,” he said. Taalas.
But he added that “more must be done, especially in the face of continued environmental degradation and present and future climate change.”
Their reports show that human activities have an effect on sand and dust storms. For example, increased temperatures, drought and increased evaporation cause a decrease in soil moisture.
“This, combined with inadequate land management, favors the appearance of more sand and dust storms,” Taalas stressed.
In recent decades, the Middle East region, where the Asian, African and European continents meet, has been greatly affected by desertification processes and “alarming” dust episodes, according to the bulletin.
Intensive water extraction and increasing pressure on hydrological resources aggravate the problems associated with an arid climate, with critical areas on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Iran, Iraq and Syria.
And the regions most vulnerable to long-range dust transport are the northern region of the tropical Atlantic Ocean between West Africa and the Caribbean, South America, the Mediterranean and Arabian Seas; the Bay of Bengal, east-central China, the Korean Peninsula and Japan.
In 2022, the transatlantic transport of African dust invaded the entire Caribbean Sea region and this year there have been frequent incursions.
The report was published when the Latin American and Caribbean Climate Week is about to be held in Panama, from October 23 to 30, prior to the United Nations Conference on Climate Change that will meet in Dubai in
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