How Saharan dust impacts the Tropics during hurricane season

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Melissa Constanzer explains how dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa impacts tropical development during the Atlantic hurricane season, disrupting the process with dry and dusty air.

Transcript

00:00satellite imagery over the past few days looking across the Atlantic shows you day in and day out

00:09a brownish cloud moving westward across the Atlantic that is Saharan dust working its way

00:18through and we do know that Saharan dust plays a large role in tropical development especially

00:23this time of year so when we talk about Atlantic hurricane season and when we look for tropical

00:28development we know we need warm water we need limited wind shear and we need sufficient moisture

00:33basically if there's a lot of dry dusty air that's going to stop that convection from forming those

00:39thunderstorms from forming to help organize a tropical system so now as we talk about Saharan

00:44dust let's take a little bit of a geography trip shall we we'll go across the world over to Africa

00:50and as we go across the ocean you can see in Africa northern Africa the Saharan desert is the largest

00:56hot desert in the world there is a desert through the Arctic and Antarctic it's also north of the

01:01equator which we know this time of year the sun's rays are really beating down near and just north of

01:06the equator that's going to help drive showers and thunderstorms so we have this moist air mass here

01:11to the south and then it starts to develop more dust just north of that area well that dust comes out

01:17in giant streams and plumes this time of year captured by the high pressure system for the early season

01:24of the Atlantic hurricane season once we get into July and August the middle of the season that high

01:29starts to drift a little farther west so sometimes not everything gets pushed all the way east

01:35but what we do know is those thunderstorms they start to develop more across the Saharan giant

01:39clusters these are the tropical waves will follow across the Atlantic for potential development

01:45but ahead of it we can also get large dust plumes which would inhibit any sort of showers and

01:50thunderstorms ahead of that tropical wave

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