The intense effect of the transport of African dust   will “suffocate” the country in the coming hours, with temperatures reaching 32 degrees while the calendar shows… April 1st!

The meteorologist at the National Observatory, Kostas Lagouvardos, spoke to Realnews about the high prices of African dust and also about the phenomenon that is expected to hit Greece with the heat that came out of nowhere!

“What we experienced in the previous days was not a great episode. I would say it was something common. Every year we encounter this in our country. It’s not a paradox, especially in March,” Lagouvardos initially said.

And he continued by stating that “according to our forecast models, it appears that a new wave of dust and heat from Africa will arrive in our country from Monday onwards”. Concentration prices will be the same, but they will last longer.”

New episodes of African dust accumulation are expected until the end of May.

At the same time, new episodes of African dust concentration are expected until the end of May, according to Professor – President of the Department of Physics at the University of Patras and Director of the Atmospheric Physics Laboratory, Andreas Kazantzidis. As he explains, “during spring, that is, from March to May, atmospheric circulation helps us to have an invasion of desert gas masses over the eastern Mediterranean”.

Regarding the latest invasion of African dust, Andreas Kazantzidis told APE – ME that “there was a period of three days in which the concentration values ​​of African dust were significantly high, while the worst day was last Wednesday”. The fact that in the region the average daily concentration of PM10 particles was 65 µg/m³ is indicative.

“This value”, he added, “is quite significant, if we take into account that the World Health Organization says that the limit of 50µg/m³ should not be exceeded more than 35 times a year”. “Essentially”, he continued, “it was one of the important episodes of concentration of African dust, which, however, is not extreme”, since, as he repeats, “during the spring we have an invasion of African dust”.

«After all», as the professor highlighted, «the closer an area is to Africa, the more difficult the situation is with African dust, which is why the island of Crete faced the biggest problems, due to the high values ​​of dust concentration” .

Speaking about particle concentrations, he said that “the characteristic we have is that most of them are not on the ground, but a few kilometers above, because they travel a little higher in the atmosphere, as they come from far away”.

Citing a satellite image, he said that “we see the dust layer, but this does not mean that it is also on the ground, as only a percentage reaches it, which we see and understand in visibility anyway”. Regarding suspended dust particles, Andreas Kazantzidis told APE – BEE “that they are large and not small like the pollution we have in winter, such as burning in fireplaces”.

“So,” he continued, “in our network that shows the real-time values ​​of the small particles, surprisingly we saw nothing, when in fact we had very high values ​​for the large particles.”

At the same time, the professor stressed that “suspended particles in general are probably the most difficult phenomenon for us and the most difficult factor, when we want to see the role of atmospheric science, whether talking about the weather forecast for the next day, or we’re still talking about climate change… Particulate matter is moving west and there’s a lot of work showing how that’s affecting fertility in the Amazon lands on the other side of the Atlantic.”

“It is a phenomenon”, he highlighted, “that goes beyond the borders of a State, obviously affecting people’s health”. Furthermore, Andreas Kazantzidis mentioned that “airborne particles have one more characteristic, that is, they also greatly affect cloudiness”, adding that: “Specifically, what will happen to clouds depends on how many particles are in the atmosphere. As we know, clouds do not contain pure water, but rather salts, which are actually dissolved suspended particles. If there were no suspended particles, there would be no clouds in the atmosphere, except those that are very high, that is, where planes fly, and that are thin.

Therefore it is very important how many particles there are, what particles they are and where they move.

So their role as we see them, but also their role in how they interact with water in the atmosphere, are the two main factors that we know the least about at the moment, about how the atmosphere behaves and what will happen to them. . next years”.

Meanwhile, Andreas Kazantzidis, responding to a question about pollution in the atmosphere of Patras during the winter by suspended microparticles, mainly due to burning fireplaces, said that “it was a good year, because the weather conditions helped” and added: “How we did not have very low temperatures at night, fireplaces were used less and this resulted in fewer suspended microparticle emissions.

In other words, it was a mild winter and therefore the pollution conditions were also mild.”

Professor Zerefos warns – “Extreme phenomena are coming”.

The temperature at the end of March  will now reach 30 degrees in several regions of the country and in some it may exceed them. A phenomenon that will be very common in the future…

“We entered a period of overheating that led to the destabilization of the climate”, observed Christos Zerefos, speaking to OPEN.

“March was a month that had temperatures above normal values ​​in all regions of the country. In some, it was the hottest in at least 15, 20 years,” said Kostas Lagouvardos, Director of Research at the Athens Observatory, and continued:

“What worries us most are the averages, which we see that for many months, essentially from July last year until March, the temperature in our country is constantly well above normal.”

The heat will continue

Seasonally high temperatures will continue and April will enter with the mercury reaching 30 degrees Celsius. With African dust even returning to Greece.

“On April 1st and 2nd we will have a serious hot invasion. We are talking about extreme behavior,” added Lagouvardos.

“The winter has shrunk, it is milder, there is no rain, there is no snow, all this leads to awakening situations and we and the administrators, the State, must be prepared to deal with extreme phenomena”, Zerefos later argued.