It isn't sand, it's red dust. And you're right Fran - it tastes a bit rough.
We had it bad yesterday, but we had a huge downpour last night which washed it all off. I'll look forward to the taste of the tapwater over the coming weeks....
Still, it wasn't thick enough to affect the the local airport, which has a 240ft(I think?) minimum visibility requirement. In 1982 we had one of these which was so thick it was literally pitch dark in the middle of the day.
The comments thread under the linked article is truly depressing - lots of stuff about how the IPCC are greenies and AGW a crock. I'm wondering if the amazing dust clouds aren't irritating the denialists in their comfy fact-resistant make-believe survival capsules.
I woke too late to see the red sky but I did see it an eerie yellow. My home office was covered in dust and I couldn't see the other side of Bondi Beach from my window. Sydney has a light frosting of dust all over. The sky cleared by afternoon as gusts kept coming through town all day.
The article headline is an easy mark for critics. I can hardly blame them.
"The world is now collectively planning to build so many coal-fired power stations over the next 25 years that their lifetime carbon emissions will equal the total of all the human coal-burning activities since the beginning of the industrial revolution."
By the way,we are not even close to tripling our co2
As I pointed out above at #13, we are well on the way to a doubling of natural CO2, with no plan yet in place to stop there. Of course, if idiots like timwells have their way, tripling CO2 will be no problem at all.
Yikes! I saw a mention of the dust storms on Wikipedia today - Canadian newspapers haven't said a word about it - pretty scary stuff. Is the iron oxide in the dust from the kind of soil you have in Australia?
I find it interesting that the newspaper article you linked to is in the "opinion" section rather than the "science", "environment", or "top news" section. What does that say about our journalism, when the analyses of scientific phenomena are classified as "opinion"?
Good lord, does it ever rain there? Best wishes on enduring this and here's hoping it ends soon. I can't imagine cleaning that stuff out of literally every nook and cranny of my home and belongings.
Nice way to celebrate the first day of spring, eh?
Is this red iron oxide of the kind that when settled onto the ocean surface causes and increase in certain plankton?
Are these frequent or can they be attributed to a particular phenomenon. It's tempting to say it's due to bad land management but I haven't heard any authoritative opinion on it yet.
I would love to go to Mars and Sydney, but not at the same time!
Doug l @ 24, it's partly poor land management, but mostly flood bringing silt into the centre of Australia followed by dry, windy conditions which pickes up the dried-out silt.
David, I was dubious about silt from inland rivers being the cause. But then this article has CSIRO scientists backing that up. They suggest that the floods into Lake Eyre last year spread a layer of silt which is now baked dry and easily entrained by the wind.
Another report suggests that more dust was picked up as the winds swept across drought stricken western New South Wales. Both drought and land management will be playing a role there. In areas that are more or less natural and where grazing by stock is minimal the earth is covered by a 'geopyte' layer of lichens, mosses, algaes and fungis, which prevent dust and sand being picked up. These survive drought in a dry state and resurrect when wet, but are destroyed by hard hoofed sheep and cattle. I noticed that in news stories reporting on the Lake Eyre Basin floods that the graziers were grinning from ear to ear and were moving in large herds of stock to take advantage of the regrowth of vegetation after floods.
Furken, most of our deserts and arid areas are actually vegetated with shrubs and herbs as well as geophytes. And a large proportion of it is not sandy. The Middle East and North Africa was probably like this originally, but many centuries of overgrazing have removed the vegetation. Australian's have been working hard for the last two centuries to turn our inland into something similar to the scalds of Iraq. They took several millenia to turn the Garden of Eden into wastlands. With the help of global warming we may achieve the same in a much shorter time span if we continue the way we are going.
I think that the redness (due to Iron Oxide) of the soils in inland Australia is due the extreme age of the geology and the eons of weathering that have occurred.
Trollhatten, there is a nifty interactive map here where you can can explore the Australian rainfall data. It's funny how perceptions change. I was talking to a friend about how much rain we have been having in Melbourne lately, but when we went and looked at the data it was actually below the average. It's just that it is wetter compared to the last few years.
Check out the temperature anomolies for the last month. Over half the continent has been more than 3ºC above average, and nearly half of Queensland and the Northern Territory is 5 to 6ºC above average!!!
That has to have played big role in the generation of the dust storm.
Well, the dust storm is clearly and IPCC conspiracy. Don't you see: it's RED dust! Communist Dust! Contaminating and defiling our precious bodily fluids. It's all cooked up by Al Gore and his commie friends at the IPCC.
The high and low peaks which slowly revealed themselves on the computer screen showed familiar patterns to a trained eye. Preliminary results show the major mineral in the dust is Quartz (silica), together with minor amounts of the clay mineral Kaolinite (aluminium silicate-hydroxide) and a very fine-grained mica (potassium, aluminium silicate-hydroxide). The red-brown colour is from goethite (iron oxide-hydroxide), which is so intensely coloured that only a small amount is needed to give the dust a good colour. Unfortunately the mineral contents do not allow exact origins of the dust to be determined, but it is believed to come from the general central Australia region.
There is a marvellous segment on the ABCs 7:30 report last night on the Lake Eyre floods, and the blooming of the desert, with some reference to the source of the Sydney-Brisbane dust storm.
Point is that this is not the first time it has happened.
On a journey to NZ's south Island in 1966 a guide on one of the glacier walks pointed out a red band in the ice profile of the glacier saying that it was a gift from Central Australia.
Actually, I think it's a Shell station...
(Hey, was that product placement????)
My brother sent me a supurb shot of an Coogie beach gone orange, which I can send you if you like.
First our [water](http://www.ramsar.org/cda/ramsar/display/main/main.jsp?zn=ramsar&cp=1-2…), now our soil!
Is there a market for soil trading credits?
Out our way at Epping the cockatoos had gone pink and the street lights looked green.
Weird ...
The air didn't taste so nice either ...
Later at school, jokes about the end of the world were on many children's lips ...
I think; It's sand storm because %70 of Australia is desert.
It's red dust, Furkan.
It isn't sand, it's red dust. And you're right Fran - it tastes a bit rough.
We had it bad yesterday, but we had a huge downpour last night which washed it all off. I'll look forward to the taste of the tapwater over the coming weeks....
Still, it wasn't thick enough to affect the the local airport, which has a 240ft(I think?) minimum visibility requirement. In 1982 we had one of these which was so thick it was literally pitch dark in the middle of the day.
The comments thread under the linked article is truly depressing - lots of stuff about how the IPCC are greenies and AGW a crock. I'm wondering if the amazing dust clouds aren't irritating the denialists in their comfy fact-resistant make-believe survival capsules.
H
I woke too late to see the red sky but I did see it an eerie yellow. My home office was covered in dust and I couldn't see the other side of Bondi Beach from my window. Sydney has a light frosting of dust all over. The sky cleared by afternoon as gusts kept coming through town all day.
The article headline is an easy mark for critics. I can hardly blame them.
Spooky. I heard this on R4 this morning but seeing someone I know affected is rather different.
Since this is supposed to be a scientific blog...
What exactly does the dust consist of?
I think of dust in the home as dead skin and other organic material. What is this red dust?
AFAIK, the redness has the same cause as the redness of Mars, i.e. iron oxide.
Not as depressing as this:
"The world is now collectively planning to build so many coal-fired power stations over the next 25 years that their lifetime carbon emissions will equal the total of all the human coal-burning activities since the beginning of the industrial revolution."
No.
However, you could actually try to present a case.
[Again](http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2009/09/john_mashey_recommends_climate…)...
"History", huh?
So, in other words, you have no case.
Try again, or better still, just crawl back under the bridge.
"the biosphere will be healthier due to co2 fertilisation"
Hmm...
[Climate change impacts on crop yield and quality with CO2 fertilization in China](http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1569568)
[Changes in wheat grain quality due to doubling the level of atmosphere CO2](http://www.fao.org/agris/search/display.do?f=./1997/v2314/US9716488.xml…)
[Super-optimal CO2 reduces wheat yield](http://www.biomedexperts.com/Abstract.bme/11542567/Super-optimal_CO2_re…)
and, of course my favourite link regarding this:
[Insects Take A Bigger Bite Out Of Plants In A Higher Carbon Dioxide World](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080324173612.htm)
"cut down on deaths due to cold"
Hmm...
[The impact of climate change on human health: Some international implications](http://www.springerlink.com/content/tnhr423862jv3400/)
[Impact of regional climate change on human health](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7066/abs/nature04188.html)
[Also, this](http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg2/ar4-wg2-chapter8.pdf)
"unsu[b]stantiated rubbish"
Oh, the irony.
12
"What is this red dust?"
'AFAIK, the redness has the same cause as the redness of Mars, i.e. iron oxide.
Posted by: Chris O'Neill '
Ha! That explains it. Those geo-engineering folk were trying to seed the oceans to promote organic growth and
missed!
As I pointed out above at #13, we are well on the way to a doubling of natural CO2, with no plan yet in place to stop there. Of course, if idiots like timwells have their way, tripling CO2 will be no problem at all.
Yikes! I saw a mention of the dust storms on Wikipedia today - Canadian newspapers haven't said a word about it - pretty scary stuff. Is the iron oxide in the dust from the kind of soil you have in Australia?
I find it interesting that the newspaper article you linked to is in the "opinion" section rather than the "science", "environment", or "top news" section. What does that say about our journalism, when the analyses of scientific phenomena are classified as "opinion"?
Good lord, does it ever rain there? Best wishes on enduring this and here's hoping it ends soon. I can't imagine cleaning that stuff out of literally every nook and cranny of my home and belongings.
Nice way to celebrate the first day of spring, eh?
Is this red iron oxide of the kind that when settled onto the ocean surface causes and increase in certain plankton?
Are these frequent or can they be attributed to a particular phenomenon. It's tempting to say it's due to bad land management but I haven't heard any authoritative opinion on it yet.
I would love to go to Mars and Sydney, but not at the same time!
Doug l @ 24, it's partly poor land management, but mostly flood bringing silt into the centre of Australia followed by dry, windy conditions which pickes up the dried-out silt.
David, I was dubious about silt from inland rivers being the cause. But then this article has CSIRO scientists backing that up. They suggest that the floods into Lake Eyre last year spread a layer of silt which is now baked dry and easily entrained by the wind.
Another report suggests that more dust was picked up as the winds swept across drought stricken western New South Wales. Both drought and land management will be playing a role there. In areas that are more or less natural and where grazing by stock is minimal the earth is covered by a 'geopyte' layer of lichens, mosses, algaes and fungis, which prevent dust and sand being picked up. These survive drought in a dry state and resurrect when wet, but are destroyed by hard hoofed sheep and cattle. I noticed that in news stories reporting on the Lake Eyre Basin floods that the graziers were grinning from ear to ear and were moving in large herds of stock to take advantage of the regrowth of vegetation after floods.
Furken, most of our deserts and arid areas are actually vegetated with shrubs and herbs as well as geophytes. And a large proportion of it is not sandy. The Middle East and North Africa was probably like this originally, but many centuries of overgrazing have removed the vegetation. Australian's have been working hard for the last two centuries to turn our inland into something similar to the scalds of Iraq. They took several millenia to turn the Garden of Eden into wastlands. With the help of global warming we may achieve the same in a much shorter time span if we continue the way we are going.
I think that the redness (due to Iron Oxide) of the soils in inland Australia is due the extreme age of the geology and the eons of weathering that have occurred.
Trollhatten, there is a nifty interactive map here where you can can explore the Australian rainfall data. It's funny how perceptions change. I was talking to a friend about how much rain we have been having in Melbourne lately, but when we went and looked at the data it was actually below the average. It's just that it is wetter compared to the last few years.
Check out the temperature anomolies for the last month. Over half the continent has been more than 3ºC above average, and nearly half of Queensland and the Northern Territory is 5 to 6ºC above average!!!
That has to have played big role in the generation of the dust storm.
Well, the dust storm is clearly and IPCC conspiracy. Don't you see: it's RED dust! Communist Dust! Contaminating and defiling our precious bodily fluids. It's all cooked up by Al Gore and his commie friends at the IPCC.
Craig Allen at 26
Very interesting interactive map that.
Try setting Rainfall > Anomalies
that shows the worrying truth and where to build your reservoirs perhaps.
http://australianmuseum.net.au/blogpost/Sydney-dust-storm-analysed-by-M…
There is a marvellous segment on the ABCs 7:30 report last night on the Lake Eyre floods, and the blooming of the desert, with some reference to the source of the Sydney-Brisbane dust storm.
Watch it here (the video link is at top right).
Point is that this is not the first time it has happened.
On a journey to NZ's south Island in 1966 a guide on one of the glacier walks pointed out a red band in the ice profile of the glacier saying that it was a gift from Central Australia.