Israel Now Subject To Year-Round Dust Storms - J. Post

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Dust storms carrying tiny particles of minerals from Africa, such as that which hit Israel on Wednesday night, are now arriving throughout the year, and not just during the spring and summer.

While there is no solid evidence that their frequency has increased in the past 50 years, some experts predict there will be many more of them in the future due to desertification and global warming.

Prof. Joachim Joseph, professor emeritus at Tel Aviv University's department of geophysics and planetary science, told The Jerusalem Post in an interview Thursday that such dust, which settled throughout Israel and was washed out Thursday by the rains, can come from Egypt, the Sahara Desert and even Saudi Arabia, depending on the location of the high winds that lift the dust particles skyward.

Israel is not the only recipient of such dust, Joseph said. The dust also levitates north and eastward from Africa to Greece, Turkey and even Switzerland, where a coating of red powder can sometimes be seen in winter on the snow. It can also travel westward to the southern US, Mexico and the Caribbean. It is not sand, which is too heavy to be carried by winds, but smaller dust particles, which are created by erosion of rocks.

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