Global Warming

Sandstorm Surge

Global heating is resulting in earlier and more frequent sandstorms across parts of the Middle East. A single storm can swirl for days, causing havoc in a dozen countries. Storms this summer have caused hospitals to be flooded with patients suffering from respiratory ailments.

Schools and businesses have been forced to close many times this year because of choking sand. Officials and environmental groups say the hotter climate, altered weather patterns and poor management of agriculture and water resources are turning the region’s soil into sand.

Climate Shift

Changes in the size and strength of the prevailing high-pressure system over the Atlantic have brought parts of Spain and Portugal their driest climate in over a thousand years. This expansion of the Bermuda-Azores High came as the western U.S. also developed a worsening “megadrought” that threatens cities such as Los Angeles, Phoenix and Las Vegas with critical water shortages.

Writing in the journal Nature Geoscience, U.S. researchers say the Mediterranean became drier as the high expanded dramatically during the 20th century in step with global heating. The vast high-pressure area controls where and when rain falls across Western Europe, typically directing storms into the Iberian Peninsula during winter.

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