How to navigate dust storms with satellite data

Dust storm sweeping across the Middle East (Source: NASA)

In June 2020, scientists were amazed by a record-breaking “Godzilla” dust cloud from Africa that traveled across the ocean to the Americas. Less than a year later, China faced its largest dust storm in a decade. In 2022, a barrage of dust events across the Middle East resulted in thousands of hospitalizations. These aren’t isolated events; such massive dust storms are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change and land issues.

What are dust storms?

Dust storms are massive clouds of dust and sand lifted by strong winds. Although dust storms are a naturally occurring phenomenon, land degradation and climate change are making them more unpredictable, intense, and costly. As climate-vulnerable regions around the world face the dangerous combination of drought, aridity, and rising temperatures, they can expect to weather more of these storms. They’re not mere inconveniences, but pose serious health risks, aggravating respiratory illnesses and spreading diseases.

Take Africa’s meningitis belt, for example, where dust intensifies respiratory diseases. Or consider Iraq, where dust storms frequently shut down schools, offices, and transport, disrupting daily life. These storms, often reducing visibility and complicating weather predictions, disproportionately affect vulnerable groups like women, children, the elderly, and those in rural areas with limited infrastructure. According to the World Bank, the MENA region alone faces $150 billion USD in welfare losses per annum because of dust storms. As dust storms grow more hazardous and less predictable, we must act swiftly to prepare for them.

Yet, forecasting these storms is challenging due to their complex nature, driven by factors like soil erosion, temperature fluctuations and wind patterns.

The Red Crescent Climate Center reports that Iraq experiences dust storms at a weekly frequency. For a significant portion of the year, Iraqis face orange skies and sometimes fatal health risk exposure. (Source: Iraqi Red Crescent Society via IFRC)

Dust storms impacting climate, peace and security

Although dust storms are not widely understood, they represent a pressing relevance within the Climate Peace and Security (CPS) agenda. The wide net of peace and security interlinkages that CPS encompasses, from food security to climate mobility, are of increasing priority to the UN Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (UN DPPA) because of their potential for aggravating conflict. Many Member States are finding that environmental hazards are beginning to outcompete conventional threats to stability, a trend that will continue as climate change progresses. The presence of indiscriminate dust storms will add difficulty to preexisting environment-related challenges like water management and agricultural production, potentially exacerbating competition over limited resources, crippling infrastructure vital to economic development, and undermining sociopolitical cohesion. Moreover, dust events may limit UN field presences and operations aimed at peacebuilding.

Dust storms are top of mind for the UN’s Climate Security Mechanism (CSM), a cross-entity task force by DPPA, the Department of Peace Operations (DPO), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) born out of the need for integrated, practical, and timely climate peace and security analysis and programming across the UN. Dust storms present a unique climate, peace and security use-case given the regional implications of their size, which cuts across borders and jurisdictions. This makes them both a shared burden and a shared opportunity for cooperation, according to Japhet Eichel, an Associate Expert working on this issue from DPPA. While dust storms “emerge as daunting borderless disruptors, impacting air quality, infrastructure, and ecosystems along their way,” Eichel illuminates how they also “present an opportunity and entry point for dialogue between countries.” However, transforming risks into opportunities for diplomacy must be done strategically; he explains that through “fostering collaboration, sharing data, and strengthening early warning systems, DPPA and other UN partners may support regional neighbors on multiple levels, including through innovative solutions, to be better positioned to mitigate the risks associated with these storms.” Building knowledge systems around climate, peace and security challenges through collective practice and experience-sharing is key to positioning the UN for impact.

Emerging technologies to monitor and understand dust storms

The launch of NASA’s EMIT spectrometer in 2022, alongside other open-source satellites and sensors like the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS), Sentinel-3 and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), marks a new era in dust storm analysis. This publicly available earth observation data offers consistent, in some cases daily, coverage, making it possible to monitor and better anticipate dust events. EMIT, specifically, focuses on regions frequently hit by dust storms and operates from the International Space Station (ISS).

NASA’s EMIT spectrometer maps the Earth’s mineral composition to trace dust storm sources across the world’s most dust-affected regions. Regions of EMIT coverage are outlined on the map. The EMIT sensor was launched in 2022 via a SpaceX rocket and is housed on the ISS.

While imaging and modeling dust storms is getting easier with advancements from organizations like WMO, NASA and ESA, fully grasping the environmental factors behind these storms remains challenging. The innovative integration of dust data with other publicly available earth observation data on conditions collected by established satellite missions, such as Landsat and Sentinel, is crucial. This fusion is essential for developing a comprehensive understanding of dust storm drivers and managing transboundary environmental risks effectively.

A non-comprehensive timeline of dust events around Lake Chad via open-source satellite images from various providers, including NASA, ESA, and the International Space Station (ISS). These year-round dust events are driven by strong winds channeled between northern Chad’s Tibesti and Ennedi mountain ranges that uplift thousands of tonnes of dust from the Bodélé Depression, considered one of the largest dust point-sources in Africa and possibly the world.

UN innovation efforts

The DPPA Innovation Cell is spearheading an initiative to monitor and help address dust storms using its open-source earth observation data infrastructure and dashboard, Geoguard, thanks to funds from the UN’s Complex Risk Analytics Fund (CRAF’d). The dashboard currently aggregates millions of earth observation data points on environmental conditions like water availability, temperature, and soil health across Africa and the Middle East. Geoguard’s data can already be used to discern patterns between environmental conditions and dust storms and their potential impact on populations.

According to NASA, dust events originating in the Bodélé Depression were detected daily in November of 2022. Scientists believe this super-source of dust is produced by dried lakes in the region, which can be reflected in higher temperatures and lower soil moisture. Coincidentally, a striking increase in average temperatures across this region in 2022 can be seen via Geoguard. While higher temperatures are not the sole or definitive driver of these dust storms, they play an important role.

Efforts are being made by the DPPA Innovation Cell and its geospatial partner, Element 84, to design an innovative detection method that allows users to pinpoint areas vulnerable to land degradation and dust storms. This method will use emerging satellite sensors, historical climate data, and bespoke Machine Learning (ML) techniques to identify dust storm events from open-source datasets to inform large-scale mitigation strategies.

Examples of dust events from open-source satellite imagery providers like NOAA are compiled and labeled in a training dataset, then predictions are run to validate spatial coverage using machine learning.

Path ahead

While many dust products are calibrated to specific regions, DPPA and its network of technical and academic partners are building a global model for Geoguard that will be validated against dust data from the WMO and other sources for accuracy. This approach will bypass the limitations of meteorological data collected from sparse and inconsistent weather stations, instead relying on global-scale data for reliable source emissions and impact monitoring.

The publicly available data developed under this project will support policymakers, ministries and local communities to access consistent and comprehensive earth data, enhancing policy-making processes and promoting international cooperation on shared environmental challenges such as dust storms. Space based technology, if leveraged effectively, can present innovative solutions for peace.

About the author: Sami Murphy is a Program Manager Consultant with the DPPA Innovation Cell. Her subject area expertise is in designing and implementing geospatial projects built to support environmental and human security. She is passionate about interdisciplinary storytelling with data and maps as well as elevating indigenous knowledge within geospatial frameworks.

“Futuring Peace” is an online magazine published by the Innovation Cell of the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs (UN DPPA). We explore cross-cutting approaches to conflict prevention, peacemaking and peacebuilding for a more peaceful future worldwide.