BACKGROUND The impact of dust storms on human health has been studied in the context of Asian, Saharan, Arabian, and Australian storms, but there has been no recent population-level epidemiological research on the dust storms in North America. The relevance of dust storms to public health is likely to increase as extreme weather events are predicted to become more frequent with anticipated chan...

Historical evidence indicates that dust storms of considerable ferocity often wreak havoc, posing a genuine threat to the climatic and societal equilibrium of a place. A systematic study, with emphasis on the modeling and forecasting aspects, thus, becomes imperative, so that efficient measures can be promptly undertaken to cushion the effect of such an unforeseen calamity. The present work int...

1. introduction dust phenomenon which occurs in arid and semiarid lands of the world is closely related to climatic characteristics of the region. according to the world meteorological organization (wmo), whenever wind speed exceeds 15 meter per second and horizontal visibility reduces to less than 1 km in a station, dust storm is reported (goudie & mideleton, 2006). great storms are created wh...

the occurrence of dust storms and their sources in the southern and central parts of iran during the period of 2002 to 2009 was investigated. for this purpose, the meteorological and synoptic data, data from the middle and upper atmosphere, and wind flow tracking model were used. dust storms and nddi were traced using satellite imagery from fasa, shiraz, and bushehr stations. analysis of the gr...

Air pollution has been shown to increase frequency of asthma attacks, as usually measured by hospitalisation rates. We hypothesise that purchase of asthma reliever medications will reflect a broader association between the environmental exposure and asthma exacerbations. In a time series analysis, we estimated the association of dust storms with mild asthma manifestations, as indicated by medic...

[1] Recent laboratory tests, analog studies and numerical simulations all suggest that Martian dust devils and larger dusty convective storms generate and maintain large-scale electric fields. Such expected E-fields will have the capability to create significant electron drift motion in the collisional gas and to form an extended high energy (u kT) electron tail in the distribution. We demonstr...

Background & Aims of the Study: Due to widespread dust-storms in the western regions of Iran and the significant role of meteorological parameters in formation and control of these storms, this study aimed to explore the correlation between meteorological parameters and dust-storm occurrences in the western part of Iran. Materials & Methods: In this cross-sectional study, meteorological param...

sand and dust storms are natural events that occur widely around the world, mostly in dry and bare lands. over thepast decade a large part of iran has been affected by this phenomenon, and tehran has not been excluded from thisevent. therefore, having knowledge of spatiotemporal frequency variations can aid us in future management andstorm trajectory assessment. in this study the synoptic anemo...

Coarse Particles and Dust Storm Mortality In a paper titled "Episodes of High Coarse Partide Concentrations Are Not Associated with Increased Mortality," Schwartz et al. (1) concluded that "coarse particles from windblown dust are not associated with mortality risk." The authors seem to have overlooked the medical literature on the health effects of the historic U.S. dust storms of the dust bow...