Friday, March 29

The haze returns and there is nothing normal about it: it is a symptom of how the meteorological dynamics are changing


Yes, hot again. Right now, a huge air pocket loaded with Saharan dust is clouding the sky over eastern Andalusia, Murcia, Albacete and the southern half of the Valencian Community. In the strait, the air quality is already affected and, according to our forecasts, it is only a first contact. The strong blow will reach us just a few days later and will reach Aragón.


Let’s not fool ourselves the haze of March 15 and 16, the one that colored the skies of half of Spain orange and reached the gates of Germany, was an exceptional episode, extremely rare. The AEMET believes that it could have been the most intense in the last century.

That means that it will be strange that we see an episode of that magnitude soon. What happens, as happened with the health alerts after the meatloaf case or with the snowstorms after Filomena, is that in the wake of these extreme weather events, the media tend to pay too much attention to phenomena that are normal. And it is that the haze of a more moderate intensity are that: normal. The problem, as we will see, is that they are no longer normal.

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However, normal and innocuous are not synonyms.. After all, mainland Spain (not to mention the Canary Islands) lives in a geographical situation that makes it especially susceptible to African dust. Calima episodes are very common in the southeastern part of the country. However, this does not mean that we should underestimate the problem.

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To give us an idea, on Wednesday the provinces of Malaga, Cordoba and Almeria, the Region of Murcia, Albacete and a good part of Alicante and Valencia will have dust concentrations of up to 200 µg/m3 (as we are reminded by Meteored, 45 µg/m3 is the current daily health risk threshold).

Above all, because they are becoming more frequent. We are not very clear why, but as Juan José Villena points out, if we take a step back and take a historical perspective, we will realize that the power of haze episodes has been increasing in intensity (and frequency) in recent years .

If we lived in a normal place. In addition, what is clear is that this spring is being especially strange and unusual weather events are taking longer than normal. In late winter, the drought was especially severe. The polar jet is still “very wavy and blurred” and that is the cause of the sudden changes in temperature in recent months. On the other hand, haze episodes also seem more intense. It would be rash to jump to conclusions.

And, at the same time, it is almost inevitable not to do it. Fundamentally, because, as we have seen during this watery year, we are especially vulnerable to water changes and, if, as Villena points out, these haze are a “symptom” of more important changes in the troposphere, the only way out of this is planning. , planning and planning.

Image | Javigo

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