Natural land targets for ERS RA-1 backscatter, including the Simpson desert, the Takla Makan, parts of the Sahara and the Arabian desert, have previously been identified and modelled using ERS-1 Geodetic Mission and Tandem Mission data. These have been used to perform cross-calibration of ERS-1/2 ice and ocean mode altimeter σ0. The advent of the Envisat RA-2 provides an opportunity to study th...

Haboobs are dust storms produced by the spreading of evaporatively cooled air from thunderstorms over dusty surfaces and are a major dust uplift process in the Sahara. In this study observations, reanalysis, and a high-resolution simulation using the Weather Research and Forecasting model are used to analyze the multiscale dynamics which produced a long-lived (over 2 days) Saharan mesoscale con...

[1] Although evidence is mounting that links global warming to changes in atmospheric dynamics over the Atlantic realm, similar studies over the African continent are lacking. And even if such models would exist, it would be difficult to verify their validity due to the paucity of meteorological observations and anemometers in the central Sahara. A pragmatic way around this problem is to monito...

During the "Green Sahara" period (11,000 to 5000 years before the present), the Sahara desert received high amounts of rainfall, supporting diverse vegetation, permanent lakes, and human populations. Our knowledge of rainfall rates and the spatiotemporal extent of wet conditions has suffered from a lack of continuous sedimentary records. We present a quantitative reconstruction of western Sahar...

Over the Sahara in summer, activity of Saharan thermal low pressure system (SHL), which is linked to West-African monsoon dynamics and mid-latitude circulation, modulated by dust concentration water-vapor transport. In this context, role clouds over western remains under-investigated. Using Meteosat-Second-Generation geostationary satellite data, for first time variability cloud occurrence type...

A large body of work has shown that year-to-year variations in North African dust emission are inversely proportional to previous-year monsoon rainfall in the Sahel, implying that African dust emission is highly sensitive to vegetation changes in this narrow transitional zone. However, such a theory is not supported by field observations or modeling studies, as both suggest that interannual var...

Hijos de las nubes and 45 Years of Dreams: Saharawi Refugees in Algeria Over the years, issue protracted exile people as a consequence so far unresolved conflict over Western Sahara has become highly politicized problem. The standstill lack clear prospects for referendum that would ultimately end make it questionable Sahrawi refugee situation will change quickly. article attempts to analyse sta...