On August 31, 2015, a massive wall of dust formed and moved across Iraq and Iran. The storm caused chaos in Tehran with 80mph winds felling tress, utility lines and shattering windows. This storm had characteristics of both the" 'shamal' - long lived and wide reaching dust storm - and 'haboob' - storm fronts that appear as walls of sand and dust." The United Sates most recently experienced a haboob in Phoenix on 8-11-15.
Al Jazeera reports:
Iran is part of the Northern Hemisphere’s ‘dust belt’ which extends from North Africa, through the Arabian Peninsula, to southern and central Asia.Winds blowing across the country’s open plains pick up loose soil and sand and may carry it for thousands of kilometres.
The dust causes severe air pollution with the attendant risk to public health. Machinery can become clogged and road, rail and air transport are severely hampered.
These storms are a natural result of weather patterns, reaching a peak during the spring and summer months as temperatures rise and rainfall reaches a minimum. However, there is evidence that their frequency has increased as a result of changes in land and water use and also climate change.
Between 2000 and 2009 the frequency of dust storms increased by 70 to 170% in the western provinces, when compared with the preceding 30 years. This increase coincided with a general fall in rainfall and a significant increase in average temperatures.
Iranian scientists have predicted that the country faces a 2 degree C increase in temperatures in the next 25 years with a 9 percent drop in precipitation.
NASA reports: The dust event first appeared in NASA satellite imagery along the Iraq–Syria border on August 31. By the next day, the storm took on the cyclonic shape visible in the top image above. By September 2, the dust cloud reached the Persian Gulf. It had spread out across the entire basin by the time of the September 3 image above.The storm appears to have been triggered by a surface low-pressure system that moved from northwest to southeast during the week. The cyclonic circulation around the center of low pressure is most obvious in the September 1 image. Weather data from ground stations in Baghdad, Khormor, and Al Asad confirm the wind circulation pattern. But the overall movement of the system from the northwest toward the Persian Gulf also suggests late-summer shamal winds.
Much of northern Iraq is in a state of exceptional drought. Anecdotal evidence and media reports in recent years suggest that dust storms have become more common in Iraq and Iran, a result of that drought and of the human and natural destruction of wetlands in the Tigris-Euphrates watersheds.
The dust event first appeared in NASA's satellite imagery along the Iraq–Syria border on August 31:August 31, 2015 dust storm, Iraq. Image credit: NASA Terra/MODIS.
By the next day, the storm took on the cyclonic shape:
September 1, 2015 dust storm, Iraq. Image credit: NASA Terra/MODIS.
By September 2, it reached the Persian Gulf and by September 3 it had spread out across the entire basin:
September 2, 2015 dust storm reaches Persian Gulf. Image credit: NASA Terra/MODIS.
September 3, 2015 dust storm engulfs the Persian Gulf. Image credit: NASA Terra/MODIS.
American troops breathe in dangerous toxins laced with metal, fungus and bacteria according to Navy Research. According to the Navy scientists this toxic stew of dust "may explain everything from the undiagnosed Gulf War Syndrome symptoms lingering from the 1991 war against Iraq to high rates of respiratory, neurological and heart ailments encountered in the current wars, scientists say."
USA Today reports.
"From my research and that of others, I really think this may be the smoking gun," says Navy Capt. Mark Lyles, chair of medical sciences and biotechnology at the Center for Naval Warfare Studies at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. "It fits everything — symptoms, timing, everything."Lyles and other researchers found that dust particles — up to 1,000 of which can sit on the head of a pin — gathered in Iraq and Kuwait contain 37 metals, including aluminum, lead, manganese, strontium and tin. The metals have been linked to neurological disorders, cancer, respiratory ailments, depression and heart disease, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Researchers believe the metals occur both naturally and as a byproduct of pollution.
Researchers in and out of the military say the particles are smaller and easier to inhale than most dust particles, and that recent droughts in the region have killed desert shrubs that helped keep down that dust. The military's heavy vehicles have pounded the desert's protective crust into a layer of fine silt, Lyles says. Service members breathe the dust — and all it carries — deeply into their lungs.
The dust contains 147 different kinds of bacteria, as well as fungi that could spread disease, Lyles found. Since the wars began in Iraq in 2003 and in Afghanistan in 2001, the military has seen a 251% increase in the rate of neurological disorders per 10,000 active-duty service members, a 47% rise in the rate of respiratory issues and a 34% increase in the rate of cardiovascular disease, according to a USA TODAY analysis of military morbidity records from 2001 to 2010. Those increases have researchers seeking possible causes.