Q&A – The Relationship Between Saharan Dust & Hurricane Season

The Saharan Air Layer, which generally moves between 5,000 and 15,000 feet above sea level, contains an average of 50% less moisture.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:22):
go today. The relationship between Saharan dust and hurricane season.
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(01:05):
topic question for a future Q and I. Today's note
is this at Brian monradio is the recent hurricane season,
it's off to a slow start. The Saharan dust. You
were on it last year, all right, So let's take
a look at this. Speaking of the Saharan.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Dust, Florida's guys have been muddied by dust as a
massive plume of Saharan dust tracks across the southeast and
Gulf coast. The fine particles still aloft after the five
thousand mile journey across the Atlantic.

Speaker 1 (01:31):
So yeah, there are some similarities as we have had,
just as we did early last hurricane season, a lot
of Saharan dust making its way here. The one thing
that it's different this year is we still haven't had
any tropical formation taking place, which will take all day long.
And so yeah, the Saharan dust, it is drying the
weather out does spring with it, a lot of sun

(01:53):
with the side of particular matter. Anytime you look into it,
you can see the haze almost kind of dusty look.
So yeah, Saharan dust is the ultimate hurricane repellent. And yes,
the two are connected. And there have been a few
times over the past year that I've discussed this topic,
and I continue to get a lot of questions around this.
Actually a lot of things pretending to hurricane forecasting hurricane season,

(02:15):
and I'm happy to address them. I take a look
at the importance of Saharan dust and influencing the Atlantic
hurricane season. If there's anything we've learned in recent years,
it's that it's been understated. It was three years ago
that I began extensively covering the topic, and rather than
the kind of reinventing the wheel, here's the crux of

(02:38):
my original story on this climate change in a quiet
Atlantic hurricane season. As I said in that story, at
the forefront of active hurricane predictions has been the topic
of climate change in specifically warmer temperatures and especially warmer
oceans resulting in an increasingly active hurricane season. It's logical
because it is the fact that warmer walls are more

(03:00):
conducive for truckical development, hence why hurricane season happens when
it does. But there's a big oldfly and the climate
change equals ever more hurricanes argument. It is not analytical,
and it's been on my radar for over a couple
of years. Mentioned you might have noticed we seemingly have
had more Saharan dust clouds flying over South Florida and

(03:22):
it hasn't been your imagination. And as I've been researching,
it was because my wife Ashley has asthma and the
increasing Saharan dust activity meant that she had a change
in hailer's use them more often frequently ended up popping zertech.
And as part of my research into the Saharan dust
came across a Harvard study in twenty twenty entitled climate

(03:46):
Change affects Saharan dust storms and the lead line set
it all. A new groundbreaking study shows that the warming
planet will make dust storms more intense than the Mediterranean
and the Atlantic. And without diving into all the specs
of the study, of the bottom line was this the
past couple of years, we have seen a marked increase
in Saharan dust clouds, and Harvard's researchers offer extensive evidence

(04:10):
that a rising temperatures climate change is behind it. So
a few things to act as a greater hurricane repellent
than massive dust clouds across the entire Atlantic, sometimes crossing
over into the Gulf. So two years ago, when we
swung into the al Nina weather pattern during hurricane season,
Saharan dust wasn't as prominent of a factor because the

(04:32):
dust often just was not making its way all the
way here. Last year, as we shifted back to the
La Ninia weather pattern, the dust steadily flowed from coast
to coast Africa to the Americas, almost like it was
on a conveyor belt. For a while, the dust was
historically high in June, and as a result, there were
only three named storms through the first two months of
hurricane season last year, and what had been predicted by

(04:54):
many to be a historically busy not just above average,
but a historically busy and even record setting season in
the end, the season concluded with only and I say
only in quotations, but only above average activity. So the
Saharan earlier, which generally moves between five thousand and fifteen

(05:16):
thousand feet above sea level, contains an average of fifty
percent less moisture. Like if you're taking a look your
average to the heron dust cloud, what does this actually mean?
Fifty percent less moisture, So that doesn't necessarily line up
with fifty percent less tropical development. It can be more
complicated than that, like, for example, all the rain that
we had recently, even with Saharan dust as it was

(05:39):
making its way into the state, but it certainly reduces
whatever else would be present. And the other potential benefit
of the dust is the ability to ever so slightly
impact ocean temperatures. The dust reflects some of the sunlight
and reflects small amounts of solar radiation that can lead
to slightly cooler ocean temperatures than otherwise would be so

(06:02):
last year there was another meaningful development on the topic,
a new study entitled the Leading Role of Saharan dust
on Tropical cycle and rainfall in the Atlantic Basin. It's
published in Science Adventures and highlighted by Stanford University, and
among the study conclusions was this surprisingly the leading and

(06:22):
this is the way they framed it. They said, surprisingly,
the leading factor or controlling hurricane precipitation is not as
traditionally thought, sea surface temperature or humidity in the atmosphere. Instead,
it's Sahara dust. So, without getting into the weeds of
the research domain takeaways where these Saharan dust has become

(06:44):
the single biggest factor in whether tropical formation takes place
and how much rain is concentrated in the storms to
do form. So in that note, Saharan dust is a
pest for people with respiratory conditions like my wife Ashley,
but it is our best friend when it comes to
hurricane season, and Ashley has said that she'll gladly take

(07:06):
a little extra and hail are used for the absence
of hurricanes. Good trade off. She definitely has it a
lot worse than me, but I do. I had burning
eyes yesterday early yesterday, and I'm pretty sure it was
the Saharan dust. Yeah, probably sensitivity to it. I think
most people would take the trade off. Most of the
last week's stup dust pointed by the way he's run
its course. So there is another slightly less dense round

(07:29):
making its way in the Eastern Atlantic right now.