Developing a satellite-based tool to monitor dust an sand storms in the UAE

Due to their low precipitation rates, arid regions are the world´s major source of atmospheric dust that has an impact on local, regional and global climate. Dust and sand storms create potentially hazardous air quality to humans, and adversely affecting climate on a regional and world-wide scale. In addition to its direct effect on surrounding air quality, excessive presence of airborne dust affects both local and regional environments due to its biogeochemical impact on the ecosystem and its radiative-forcing effect on the climate system. The objective of this research is to develop a thermal-based technique to detect and monitor dust and sand storm events in the UAE from space. The developed tool will use the difference in particle size between airborne dust and surface sand to detect airborne dust over desert. Previous similar studies have observed strong differences in infrared emissivity between airborne dust particles, with size less than 5 μm, and desert sand particles, with diameter greater than 70 μm. This difference in thermal behavior will be used in this study to detect the presence and map the extent of airborne dust over the study area. Several well-documented dust storm events that occurred between 2008 and 2009 will be used to calibrate and validate the new tool. Due to their high temporal resolution, geostationary data from METEOSAT SEVIRI-MSG was used and Preliminary data assessment tests have shown a great potential of this approach in detecting airborne dust and sand over the bright underlying surfaces.