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
To Mike Lorrey
No, Lake Eyre is not fed by any major or minor metropolitan area. Take a look on Google Maps or Earth. It’s below sea level, and is fed by a maze of channels, mainly from the NNW, coming down from the Gulf of Carpentaria. When there’s a big enough flood in the gulf country, the floodwaters come down through the channel country, and, if there’s enough volume, Lake Eyre fills up. Most of the time it’s a salt bed – think Bonneville.
It’s a bit event when the lake fills. http://www.wrightsair.com.au/floodwaternews.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/13/2490585.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/02/13/2490585.htm
Mike,
Make that NNW a NNE.
Peter
You are not going to believe this, I am gobsmacked myself. An advert for tomorrow’s TodayTonight current affairs program here in Australia on channel 7…climate change is now responsible for…..wair for it….swallow that mouthful of coffee….fires in petrol stations, actually 1 every week. Apparently, it’ll get worse too. I will have to watch that tomorrow night and see if i can find a link on the channel 7 website.
Here’s some footage of the dust at Broken Hill.
http://player.video.news.com.au/couriermail/#nMW82LLtNvwx5XmDBYQNt3TWJdQ18GIh
“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.”
Let them report it as “climate catastrophe”. I don’t care because I can’t help but see that very cycle of life in those pictures, the wonders of nature at work!
Just not every day where I get that appreciative feeling! : )
For years since the 70s I flew Adelaide-Alice Springs-Darwin every month or two. I have seen Lake Eyre full and empty a few times. We had mines at places like Tennant Creek (Google Earth) where sometimes the desert bloomed after heavy rain.
Heavy or widespread rain episodes can cause sheet flooding especially in the braided river systems that feed Lake Eyre through semi desert to the N-E, even rain that falls up to 1,000 km away from L. Eyre. After the shallow flooding, the water evaporates but the mud stays. Fine sediment covers the very top soil surface. This is a large contributor to dust storms. It does not last forever, so there is an optimum time for the wind to make big dust storms like the other day. It has very little to do with agriculture, if anything.
The lack of a linkage between global warming and a dust storm like this is shown by the continuation of the dust cloud to New Zealand. After moving about 1,500 km from L Eyre to the East Coast, it then went 2,000 km more to New Zealand over the Tasman Sea. So it is not required for there to be dust on the surface to keep the dust storm going. It can continue over the sea. I guess it would have continued over the sea whether the SST was 1 or 2 or 3 degrees higher than it was.
In 1983-4, 2 of us drove west from Kalgoorlie to Perth through an East-moving dust storm, some 550 km as the crow flies. In this case they flew backwards to keep the dust out of their eyes.
Don’t you agree that it was a wonderful inspiration to make an early ststement that Global Warming would cause an increase in extreme weather events? Every time something anomalous happens, this now gets trotted out, as if it has something to do with anything.
I’ve got to disappear now. There is a big solar panel installation that was in the path of the dust storm and the mirrors are bloody fithy. I’m not going to clean them, I’m going to watch how they clean them without water, possibly rationed because of drought. Welcome, Windex, the Greek man was right.
What a wonderfully technological world we live in. I can view the latest news from down under simply by clicking on a link posted by our friends there. All while sitting comfortably in my den with a morning cup of coffee and wearing shorts and a t-shirt. I also get a quick history lesson about the possible causes. But alas, all this wonderful living is killing the planet so I suppose we should stop and go back to just hearing about ages old rumors, legends and myths.
FWIW, if we cannot control localized dust storms how the hell are we supposed to control global climate. Dumbasses!!!!
The BBC said “this is clear evidence of Global Warming”, but then added, “some scientists think it is natural variability”
Unusual caveat, for the BBC.
But they seem to forget that even the UK had a sandstorm way back in the 1970s, from the Sahara. It was not that thick by the time it reached the UK, but Spain and France got a real dusting.
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>>> Most of it is actually aboriginal land.
Ahh. Must have been the Abbos gathering in the firewood for a cold winter. 😉
(An old joke about Global Warming predictions.)
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For Rik, who asked about desalination plants:
Not many know (or, for those in government, care to remember) the long, sad, story of the desalination plant built on the Arizona-Mexico border, near Yuma, to address Colorado River treaty obligations. (yes, that is a VERY long story)
Suffice it to say that construction started in the 60’s, $400 million dollars was spent constructing it, and it took 20 years to build.
Then – it was operated for a 6 month test run in the early 90’s, there were environmental complaints about what was being done with the impure salt that it was producing, and the plant was then shut down. It has been padlocked and forgotten for 16 years now.
The contractors who built it made a fortune. The government agencies who authorized it got 20 years worth of paperwork to be busy with and employees to add while it was being built. Lawyers on all sides were able to build a career out of the 20 years of legal wrangling over it. A whole pile of scientists made their careers by being able to build and critique a gigantic lab experiment that they could play with to their heart’s content.
Everybody made a fortune off the gravy train.
Everyone, that is, except the taxpayers, who spent $400 million to build a facility that only operated for 6 months out of it’s (now) 40 year existence.
And quite obviously, none of the vaunted desalination ever actually happened. But who cares? That seems to have never been the point.
Were there any consequences to anyone for this failure? Nope, and that’s why you’ve probably never heard about this. Once it was shut down, it was rather conveniently airbrushed out of any official narratives. Desalination plant in Arizona? What’s that? We never heard of that.
Lesson to take home from this tale? This is the trajectory these big projects always follow. Don’t get sucked into believing that they’re ever going to do what they promise – that’s just the hook to get the suckers to bite. And the bigger the project, the bigger the scam.
Alan the Brit
Try today’s daily telepgraph…. this might have something to do with it!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/6222826/Antarctic-glaciers-melting-faster-than-previously-thought.html
During the Younger Dryas (lasting about 1000 yrs), the Cheasapeake Bay area in MD was covered w/3 feet of wind-blown dust from what must have been enormous duststorms. Greenland ice cores also show far greater dust deposits during the last glacial max (LGM). This was caused by the climate in a very cold phase.
So now dust storms are caused by warming. Who knew?
FWIW, storms of dust from the Gobi desert are a “feature” of Japan.
Politics aside, it was an astonishing natural event – a totally crimson dawn in the sky, followed by yellow. Another attribute was turning the house lights on and them glowing green in the mist. Has anybody got an explanation for that?
wws (05:52:49) :
For Rik, who asked about desalination plants:
,,,,, “Then – it was operated for a 6 month test run in the early 90’s, there were environmental complaints about what was being done with the impure salt that it was producing,,,,,,,”
——————————————————————
Here in El Paso we have an operational desalination plant which produces 27.5 million gallons of fresh water daily. Most if not all of the water is used for watering our lush green lawns and megatons of CO2 removing vegetation!
http://www.epwu.org/water/desal_info.html
“El Paso is the site of the world’s largest inland desalination plant.”
This plant get around the “waste problem” by only removing most of the fresh water and the rest with a higher salt and mineral content is pumped back into the ground; waste problem solved.
The web site avoids describing the actual disposal process however the re-injection of of the concentrate back underground using injection wells was described early during it’s construction.
“Approximately 83% of the water is recovered while the remainder is output as a concentrate. At the conclusion of the reverse osmosis process, the permeate, or desalted water, is piped to a storage tank and the concentrate is routed to a disposal facility.”
Correction, I see that that the web site does describe the re-injection of the concentrate back under ground.
http://www.epwu.org/water/desal_info.html
At the same time, the sea ice extent in the southern hemisphere has now exceeded “normal”:
http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/S_stddev_timeseries.png
The main reason is cost. You underestimate the required energy and overestimate wind and industry energy. If you want enough desalinated water for agriculture, start building nuclear power plants. Even then, fresh water is not enough to green many deserts. Where there is bare rock or 200 feet of sand, you’ll have to start at the edge and expand as the topsoil is built (whether by plants or by using more energy to move usable soil). Where there is no surface drainage you need enough water to desalinate the soil itself, and a way for the salty water to leave the surface.
And if you’re doing this just to turn a desert into a green wilderness, you need enough spare money to throw into the woods. If you’re doing it for agriculture, you’ll probably send your expensive water to an agricultural area rather than the desert… and the farmers by the desert will fight it as much as they can.
So if you know someone with a lot of money, they can build one nuclear plant and desalination plants that pumps one pipe full of fresh water into the desert. It’s going to take a very large pipe and a lot of time to green the desert.
Just on the BBC World news – Antarctica is losing more ice and thinning.
Stop press.
Looks like the southern hemisphere is doomed. Time to go back to the Mother country – we will even forget the crimes that got you sent there in the first place …. 😉
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ralph….
“Unusual caveat, for the BBC.
But they seem to forget that even the UK had a sandstorm way back in the 1970s, from the Sahara. It was not that thick by the time it reached the UK, but Spain and France got a real dusting.”
In 1966 my brand new E type Jag was covered in pink Sahara dust on 3 separate nights. All in the same week. That was in South Bucks UK
The BBC is going on about new satellite Arctic and Antarctic data showing rapid melting…………yawn.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8272357.stm
Rik Gheysens (01:08:44) : “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.”
Countless others have had the same idea for the past 50 years or so. First, wind energy is not much better than solar energy–no wind, no energy. Second, reverse osmosis is VERY energy intensive. Third, pumping water from the ocean to a desert also requires a lot of energy.
The El Paso project is based on using low salt content feedwater: “The brackish water contains more salt than is allowed in drinking water, but significantly less than ocean water.” Note also that the El Paso site doesn’t say where the power comes from.
Thus some desalination projects work (I believe Israel has several working installations); many don’t, even when the source and use are relatively close together. (e.g., Santa Barbara, California’s boondoggle). Desalination is a panacea only in the minds of econuts.
From the article:
“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.”
And diseases for alga, corals, fish and marine mammals also. Viral particles, fungi spores, and bacteria, potentially harmful for marine living beings, are transported to oceans by these winds. We call them “Red Winds” or “Black Winds”, depending on the color of the soil substrate from which the dust is being dragged off.
inre: desalinization plants
At least the water rates in El Paso are cheap. That’s an argument for its efficiency.
http://www.epwu.org/financial/rate_surveys.html
Something to keep in mind. Not content to seize control through atmospheric co2 regulations, the internationalists will be making moves on our water!
http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=1152
You can check if your town or city has signed up for this intn’l “sustainability” project:
http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=772
dust storm news in Australia from 1982…an article that could almost have been written today…
All I have to say is: wow! I’ve never even seen dust storms that big here in Texas! I wonder how long it will take for all of that red dust to settle into the ocean.