Sahara dust cloud to cover Netherlands in layer of sand today, tomorrow

Netherlands residents can expect to find their cars and bikes covered in a thin layer of sand as a Sahara dust cloud crosses the country on Wednesday and Thursday. The dust will also be in the air after Thursday but in lower concentrations.

The concentration of Sahara dust in Dutch skies is very high on Wednesday and Thursday at over 120 micrograms per cubic meter at an altitude of three kilometers, scientist Mark Parrington told Hart van Nederland. Netherlands residents planning to wash their cars can best wait a few days.

Sand and dust from the Sahara desert end up in the atmosphere through sandstorms and are then blown to Europe by the wind, Weer.nl weatherman Dennis Wilt explained. “The sand sometimes travels thousands of kilometers. Sometimes, it even crosses the ocean to America.”

Earlier this year, a team of international scientists, including Jan-Berend Stuut of the Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ), discovered that the Sahara dust cloud plays a role in reducing global warming. The dust helps absorb methane from the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas that causes 30 times as much warming as CO2.