There’s been quite a bit of buzz about the dust storm in Australia that hit Queensland, New South Wales, and NSW city Sydney on September 23rd. Pictures like the ones below have been all over the web.
Left: National Post Tim Wimborne/Reuters, Right: Examiner.com AP Photo/Rob Griffith
But it is the photos taken from space that are the most interesting I think. NASA’s Earth Observatory captured a truly amazing photo that shows the dust storm front as it swept across the continent and headed out to sea over eastern Australia where the borders of Queensland and NSW meet.
That dust headed to sea has an unappreciated benefit – it will fertilize the ocean with its mineral rich dust. There may be some interesting blooms of sea life in the weeks to come.
There’s also a cool Google Earth KML file to download and use with the space imagery.
download Google Earth file (1 KB, KML)
Here’s what the Google Earth file will do – overlay the cities and borders. This is a very wide zoom from Brisbane to Sydney. Using the Google Earth KML file and zooming in further yields much more detail.
NASA narrative for this image: A wall of dust stretched from northern Queensland to the southern tip of eastern Australia on the morning of September 23, 2009, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this image. The dust is thick enough that the land beneath it is not visible. The storm, the worst in 70 years, led to canceled or delayed flights, traffic problems, and health issues, reported the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) News. The concentration of particles in the air reached 15,000 micrograms per cubic meter in New South Wales during the storm, said ABC News. A normal day sees a particle concentration 10-20 micrograms per cubic meter.
Strong winds blew the dust from the interior to more populated regions along the coast. In this image, the dust rises in plumes from point sources and concentrates in a wall along the front of the storm. The large image shows that some of the point sources are agricultural fields, recognizable by their rectangular shape. Australia has suffered from a multiple-year drought, and much of the dust is coming from fields that have not been planted because of the drought, said ABC News.
References
- The high-resolution image provided above is at MODIS’ full spatial resolution (level of detail) of 250 meters per pixel. The MODIS Rapid Response System provides this image at additional resolutions.
- Australian Broadcasting Corporation News. (2009, September 23). Dust settles as storm rolls north. Accessed September 23, 2009.
- NASA image by Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, Goddard Space Flight Center. Caption by Holli Riebeek.
As WUWT reader Keith Minto writes:
This is the best image I can find of the dust storm that passed over eastern Australia. NASA has images from 12 Sept showing it coming from Lake Eyre. Apparently when lakes dry after having water they leave behind very fine particles that is carried up & stays up. Seems that this is a world wide phenomenon, when lakes fill and empty completely and nothing to do with the dreaded Climate Change. In other words, if the lakes did not fill, and the drought was worse, then this might not have happened! Pity the newspapers did not report this….took me all of 5minutes to piece this together. The earlier image shows the dust originating in Lake Eyre and moving east out into the Tasman sea towards New Zealand, and as far as the media was concerned it did not happen. It’s the old story, if an event does not touch large cities it is a non event.
Sept 12th MODIS image from NASA showing dust from Lake Eyre:
http://modis.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/individual.php?db_date=2009-09-21
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Keth Minto’s analysis is now being verified from a number of sources. Furthermore Lake Eyre only had water in it this year because of massive rains. This of course did not stop the ABC and Sydney Morning Herald (same stable as The ‘if everyone believes it, no point debating the science’ Age) jumping in within hours with a drought /global warming explanation.
“There’s been quite a bit of buzz about the dust storm in Australia that hit Queensland, News South Wales and Sydney on September 23rd.”
FYI, Sydney is part of New South Wales not separate from NSW.
Just sayin’, that’s all.
They might have been able to see the dust storm from space but I could only see as far as the house across the road the dust was so thick in my street in Brisbane.
REPLY: I edited a bit to make it clearer, I know Sydney is within NSW, but for locals like yourself my description may have sounded odd. – Anthony
However, it was only the second biggest dust storm I have seen!
A guy named Ian Mott posted this excellent explanation for the dust storms below at Jennifer Marohasey’s blog:
“The Australian Bureau of Meterology (BoM) is being highly misleading by claiming that the dust has originated in part from NSW. The storm hit Broken Hill from the west and that city is only 40km from the state border. So all the talk about dryer than usual conditions in the western half of NSW is fatuous irrelevant crap.
Indeed, any link to agriculture in this instance has no substance. The wind direction on 23/09/09 clearly places the source of this dust as North Western SA and South Western NT, one of the least intensive agricultural regions on the planet. Most of it is actually aboriginal land.
It is also the case that just a few months ago Eastern NT and North Eastern SA had one of the lushest and most widespread groundcovers for a few decades. That ground cover has not been grazed off. It has dried out but it remains in situ between the deeper rooted species that are still doing OK.
It is intellectually sloppy to be assigning blame for the intensity of a Sydney dust storm on a minor variable like desert vegetation cover. Even a rudimentary grasp of physics would indicate that the primary variable was the intensity of the wind over exposed desert soils and its persistence in transporting the load as far as the east coast. Winds can vary from zero km/h to 100+km/h while normal dry season sandy desert soils will vary between 90% exposed to 100% exposed (ie 0 to 10% FPC). And of course, the gibber (stony) deserts have even less variation.
Less than 2% of our Australia is subject to cropping and only a small portion of that is caught in the small window of exposed soil and strong dry winds. The overwhelming majority of it involves a successful crop (a ground cover) followed by retained stubble, including retained root systems, followed by re-emergent pasture or weeds.
It is almost trite to remind people that only a tiny portion of the 2% cropping land is in the western half of NSW. Even less of it is north of the Bight. And it has always been the case in the past. It is also the case that overgrazed pastures still have a complete root system in place to bind the soil. The fact that the casual observer cannot see it does not negate its presence. So while it is possible that minor localised dust storms might have been possible from past farming practices, the big ones were almost entirely natures work.
Winds blow. And sometimes they blow over deserts and pitch up dust. Get used to it.”
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/09/dust-storm-hits-central-eastern-australia/#comments
As recently as mid-July, Australian tourism operators were flying visitors to Lake Eyre to observe birdlife and wetlands after the big 2009 wet season. There would need to have been a climate event on a biblical scale for evaporation to have happened at Lake Eyre since then, in order to produce the dust we received in coastal NSW yesterday.
I favour the unplanted cropland theory for the origins of the dust that now coats every horizontal and vertical surface in my home. Cleaning sucks (sigh).
Youtube video of it:
REPLY: The description on YouTube says “Driving through a dust storm between Wilcania and Broken Hill, in NSW Australia on 21 Dec 2007. ” so I don’t think it is the one we are discussing here. Interesting video though. -A
Surely the bottom line is “Biggest in 70 years”. So, in or around 1939 there was a LARGER dust storm. What does this prove? AGW, or that these things happen every now and again? Apart from concern about having to clean the dirty places, this cannot merit international hysterics.
Geoff Alder
The Alarmist Media can not help but to Interpret “Weather Events” within the confines of the Dominant AGW Narrative.
Story Telling trumps Relating Facts.
Unfortunately – too many people are seemingly unaware that the Media does not have a distinction between telling stories and relating facts.
Not “unprecedented”
“The dust storm reached central Sydney at 11am, reducing visibility to a few kilometres.”
“Bureau of Meteorology records show that Sydney was also affected by dust storms in April 1994, September 1968, December 1957, and January 1942, when the most severe dust storm to hit the city reduced visibility at Sydney airport to 500 metres.”
http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/nsw/20021023.shtml
Concerning the origins of the dust, being red in colour, it obviously had to have come from desert regions of central Australia which is precisely the same colour red as the dust storm.
I’ve lived in Alice Springs, N.T. in the centre of Australia and the dust storms there were the same colour as the red dust storm I witnessed yesterday in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.
Jennyinoz (23:07:51) : However, it was only the second biggest dust storm I have seen!
When was the biggest?
The Australian has reasonable summary identifying Lake Eyre as the source but then goes on about the drought being the cause failing to mention the recent unusual rains in the Lake Eyre basin.
The storm was generated by an intense cold front moving across drought-affected areas in South Australia and NSW
The media do love their myths.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,26117299-5006784,00.html
It might be worth noting that the amount of eolian dust in deep-sea sediments and glacier ice has long been known to be a climate proxy. The relationship is:
more dust = colder climate
Scroll down to the text of the September 12 image from MODIS and click on to ‘this Terra image from the same day’ in blue to track its path towards New Zealand.
The dust is on every surface at the moment, it is bright red and appears iron rich and as suggested, should be great ocean fertilizer.
There are descriptions of large plumes of Australian dust on the sea bed, stretching out from the east coast like a flame, towards and beyond New Zealand, going back 18,000 years……..we are just recent observers.
If someone wants to check, it is in a publication by Australian author Bob Beale.
Well the BBC managed to get a comment in about “some are claiming that this is the unmistakeable sign of Climate Change”. However, they have been a little quiet, apart from the newspapers today, one claiming that the “Greenland ice melt is happening faster than experts expected!” or words to that effect. I will investigate further, as I expect this is news regurgitation in action, particularly as no major mention has been made (as far as I am aware & I don’t include Catlin)) of any Arctic ice melt catasrophe this year.
The logical explanations for the dust storm given above seem perfectly plausible, even to an engineer with basic geological knowledge!
I had this reflection concerning countries with deserts. Why not desalinate seawater and bring the water to the dry areas? The energy can come from wind energy or from waste heat produced by industry. Solar energy is known to be not very efficient as source for the desalination process.
Advantages of such operation:
– bring to a halt the desertification,
– green and wet areas cause a cooling of surface temperature,
– slow down the rise of sea level (this latest argument not so convincing? ;-))
In central NSW in the wheat belt dust storms used to be a weekly event. Ian Mott has summed it up pretty well IMO.
Naturally tonight on ABC 702 Drive Robyn “100M sea level rise” Williams was saying, No it’s not proof of climate change but it is what climate change predictions have said would happen and another commentator from the global warming rag SMH was talking about how we need to start eating kangaroos because cattle and sheep grazing causes dust storms.
Looks like old news dredging exercise re Greenland ice melt, no information on BBC’s website or elsewhere so far.
AtB:-)
I live in the Upper Western area of NSW, and can attest that we copped it just as bad as you coastal folk.
We can’t be blamed for it though. Because of the good rains earlier in the year, there is very little unplanted cropland out here. As a matter of fact, we’re about 2 weeks away from what looks to be a quite decent harvest.
The big western dust storms are quite common (out here anyway), the only reason the world is hearing about this one is that it made it over the mountains and to a coastal metropolitan area. The last one that made it that far was in 1960-something, well beyond what the media calls “living memory”. Generally a decent dust storm occurs here every 3-4 years, this is the second mud dump i’ve been in this year though (the last one was about 5 months ago).
Is this Lake Eyre part of any watershed that is drained by a major metro area?
Suzannah, I tend to agree with you but Associate Professor Michael Box of the School of Physics said.
Quote:
“the most likely source of the dust is the Lake Eyre Basin, which a few months ago was a wetland oasis.
“The Lake Eyre Basin area of central Australia is a dusty place, especially in early spring. Dust storms originating in this region are common, although it is far less common that the dust is carried the 1,500 kilometres to Sydney and beyond,” he said.
“However, with winds of sufficient strength and the right direction dust may be carried off the Australian coast – even as far as New Zealand.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/23/2694424.htm
From the same link, :
Climatologist Dr Samuel Marx of the University of Queensland says the fine particles in this dust storm were probably laid down during after the flooding rains that occurred in outback Queensland late last year.
Quote:
“You often get these dust storm events after you’ve had wetter years,” he said.
“After you’ve had decent rains like we had last year, you get flood waves moving through central Australia. These deposit lots of fine material and once this dries out it easily gets entrained by the wind.”
Dr Marx, who has looked at Australian dust storms that have occurred over the last 10,000 years, says these events occur more often when there are greater oscillations between wet and dry periods.
He says future climate modelling by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests this may happen more often in the future.
“One of the predictions of the IPCC is that the Australian climate will be more variable and this should probably result in more dust storms,” Dr Marx said.
But he says the role of dust in climate modelling is still a large unknown.
“It changes the thermal structure of the atmosphere. Dust particles can absorb radiation and reflect radiation – it really depends on the characteristics of the dust and where it is being transferred,” he said.
Dr Marx says previous studies estimate the amount of dust in a storm of this size between 8 and 40 million tonnes, most of which will be deposited in the ocean, which could result in a explosion of phytoplankton.
“There has been quite a bit of work that has shown that these dust plumes are actually linked with phytoplankton blooms in the Southern Ocean. That’s a good thing in some ways,” he said.
I think it would be a nice idea for all Australians to spend at least a few months well west of the Great Dividing Range, maybe even west of Bourke before they’re allowed to vote.
A dust storm might not be such a surprise to the initiated and be of less value to propagandists, it could also help break the city versus country polarization which gives Australia’s urbanites an unofficial gerrymander.
I recently returned from a long, meandering trip through much of the country immediately to the east of where the dust appears to have risen (Andamooka, Birdsville, Dig Tree, North Flinders Ranges, Yunta, Broken Hill). Soil was no different from the last three trips to the region — fine, talcum-like deposits that infiltrated every crack and crevice. It was so fine that the keyhole in the padlock on my trailer’s toolbox filled up with the bloody stuff and had to be blown out before I could insert the key. About a month ago at Arkaroola, the wind blew warm and hard for three consecutive days and you could tell — this is a subjective appraisal, admittedly — that just a couple more knots would have seen a vast mega-tonnage get airborne and head for the coast. I guess those stronger winds came after I left. As for agricultural degradation, there ain’t no agriculture out that way, just the odd sheep every 10 km or so. If you were looking for a cause, the closest speculation might get you would be the vast feral goat populations, which were thickest between Broken Hill and Mildura (where the loess was dumped, not lifted)
I’d like to take a few of these gullible young reporters out that country and, after overcoming the temptation to abandom them in a waterless waste, demonstrate why all their Chicken Little scenarios and post-religion dogmas about man’s sins and the inevitable retribution of the Great Green Goddess can’t survive an encounter with empirical evidence.
Yep, it sure has happened before. See:
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/environ/ec_lows.shtml
And in that link take a look at “the great dust up of November 1902”.
But folks, the ABC tell us that from now on we can expect a lot more of em.
Better get your vote in quick for an emissions trading scheme.
Can’t find a synoptic chart for the day off hand. Worth looking at if some-one can find one. I recall it was a very complex low system in southern NSW, the remnants of which are now just west of New Zealand:
http://www.bom.gov.au/cgi-bin/nmoc/latest_MSLP.pl?IDCODE=IDY00050
Tonight the 7.30 report actually covered the event extremely well. They didn’t even mention climate change.
Reporter Paul Lockyer had been at Lake Eyre 4 months ago and he returned today with a great cameraman. He showed how the wild flowers covered the place just as Motty suggested but he also showed how as the lake dries out, which it has, the plains left behind are made up of superfine soil that whirls into the air on even a slight breeze and as it heats up the air rises taking the dust with it.
They’ll have the story up by the morning. Great photography, well worth a watch.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/
August was a “hot” month in Australia, but only because there was a hot band across the middle, subtropical 1/3 of the big island. This is normal for winter.
Lake Eyre filled earlier this year; I though I read that it is filling again.
Still have central heating on in southern Oz because of repeat series of low pressure weather patterns across southern part of island, accompanied by higher than usual winds, which caused the dust storm. Rainfall returned to normal in September. This may be due to cold weather in Antarctic (?global cooling) – scientists at McMurdo Sound are having a tough time.
Sadly, our politicians will happily exploit this as evidence of climate change.
Our leader, Kevin cRudd is big noting himself in US as I write. The sooner copenhagen is over, the better for our sanity.