Dust still covering Almeria

The current large cloud of dust from the Sahara which is moving across Europe has been travelling through Spain, southeastern France, Germany, and the southeast of Britain.

This dust cloud has made the skies hazy and created colourful sunsets in many places. It’s also left dusty residue on cars and windows. However, it’s brought along air pollution in the form of tiny “PM10” particles, which can be breathed in. In some areas, the amount of these particles has gone above the safe limit set by the EU.

In places like Almeria and the South of Spain, the air has been particularly dirty, with PM10 levels being four times higher than what’s considered healthy. This isn’t the first time this has happened recently. In fact, this is the third such event in recent weeks. The European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) has described this current dust cloud as “exceptionally intense”.

Previous dust clouds

The previous dust clouds mostly stayed further south, over the Mediterranean and southern Europe, but some residue reached as far north as Scandinavia in March. According to Mark Parrington, a senior scientist at CAMS, this current dust cloud is part of the same weather pattern that brought warm weather to western Europe in recent days. He also mentioned that while it’s not uncommon for Saharan dust to reach Europe, there’s been an increase in both intensity and frequency of these events in recent years, possibly due to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns.

CAMS expects this episode to gradually end by Tuesday 9, reaching countries like Sweden, Finland, the Baltic states, and northwest Russia.