Monday, January 31, 2011

Sand storms in Mideast 'damaging people's health'

Trade Arabia Business News Information: Dust and sand storms in Bahrain and the region risk damaging people's health and could lead to climate change, an expert has warned. Dust and sand particles hanging in the air for long periods of time prevent the sun's rays from reaching the ground, leading to colder than usual weather, said Geneva-based World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) research department scientific officer Slobodan Nickovic.

'Gradually, this can lead to the weather patterns changing,' he told our sister newspaper Gulf Daily News (GDN). Speaking on the sidelines of an international symposium on sand and dust storms in the Arab region, he said while it is impossible to prevent such conditions given the huge desert areas in the region, one could predict them better and manage the situation in advance.

'Though climate change is an important side effect, people's health being affected is a major issue if these dust storms are not managed properly,' said Nickovic. He said a number of studies on climate change found ground temperatures can drop up to 6C if dust blankets the atmosphere….

A sand storm over Erfoud, Morocco, shot by Galilea for German Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

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