Climate Crisis: North America gets its own Mideast-Style Khamsin, courtesy Freak Canadian Smokestorm

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Not only Toronto in Canada but New York, Washington, D.C. and other cities of the US northeast got a taste of the Middle Eastern Khamsin on Wednesday. Of course, we had our own, North American twist on it, since ours was not a sandstorm but a “smokestorm.” Some 400 wildfires are burning across Canada, with 239 of them classified as “out of control.” You never want to hear a thing like that. Humans burning gasoline, fossil gas and coal have put billions and billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past 2.5 centuries, which has caused global surface temperatures to rise, drying out the forests even up north.

The air quality index in New York reached 484 on Wednesday, giving it the most dangerous air to breathe in the world that day. Even Dubai, on the edge of the Empty Quarter Arabian desert, had an AQI of 113. Just breathing in New York for this 24-hour period is like smoking a whole pack of cigarettes.

Toronto’s average temperature in the first half of the nineteenth century was something like 44 degrees F. During the past decade it has been closer to 50 degrees F. A 6-degree F. increase may not seem like a lot but this is an average. It means some days in the summer now are very substantially hotter than they were 150 years ago. Canada’s arctic is heating up four times faster than the global average, and the global average increases are already horrifying. Dry forests are easier to set afire, and hot air carries more moisture and is more prone to thunderstorms, so that lightning strikes set more forest fires.

When I lived in Cairo, every spring we went through something called
a “Khamsin” (or Khamseen). Heavy winds brought particles from the desert into the great Egyptian metropolis for several days. Visibility dropped dramatically and the city took on a ghostly yellow aura. I was advised by Egyptian friends to put valuable electronics like my Canon camera and my tape recorder (this was a long time ago) into plastic bags and tie them tightly, since otherwise the particles would invade them and ruin them. A Khamsin lasted for three or four days and then the air cleared up. It was hard on people with asthma, heart conditions, and chronic bronchitis.

The Egyptian Environmental Affairs Agency explains the Khamsin in Egypt (which has analogues in Arabia and in West Africa):

“A phenomenon of Egypt’s climate is the hot spring wind that blows across the country. The winds, known to Egyptians as the khamsin, usually arrive in April but occasionally occur in March and May. The winds form in small but vigorous low-pressure areas in the Isthmus of Suez and sweep across the northern coast of Africa. Unobstructed by geographical features, the winds reach high velocities and carry great quantities of sand and dust from the deserts. These sandstorms, often accompanied by winds of up to 140 kilometers per hour [87 mph], can cause temperatures to rise as much as 20°C [36 °F] in two hours. The winds blow intermittently and may continue for days, cause illness in people and animals, harm crops, and occasionally damage houses and infrastructure.”

The winds can carry bacteria as well as sand, and so spread diseases. They also pick up minerals like phosphate. Some of the phosphate deposits the benefit the Amazon rain forest are carried there by Sahara wind storms.

Because of human-caused climate change, dust storms are picking up in frequency and severity in the Middle East, and rather than having one in the spring Iraq suffered from 8 of them just from March to May last year. Extra hot air causes the desiccation of the soil beneath it. The disarray in Iraq caused by the US occupation also disrupted traditional water management and made the problem worse.

Aside from regions near the Mediterranean littoral such as Israel and Lebanon, the Middle East is not rich in forests.

But in the northern temperate zone where you have large forests, climate change is contributing to more frequent and more intense forest fires, which are also breaking out at more northerly latitudes than we had been used to.

So on this continent we are being introduced to the Khamsin as smokestorm rather than as sandstorm. From the video posted to the web from New York, it looked to me just as Cairo does during its Khamsin. Particles in the air are particles in the air, I guess. Some plane flights had to be cancelled because of poor visibility. The New York Public Library closed. Schools closed. People were advised against jogging or indeed going outside if they didn’t have to.

The freedom we take for granted in the temperate zone, of just going outside, was withdrawn.

It didn’t used to get this hot in Canada. In fact, as an old man who grew up in the twentieth century, let me just pass along to any youngsters out there reading this that the words “Canada” and “hot” just were not a combination you heard very often — really only when there was some weird El Nino event once in a blue moon. Canadian scientists say that the country has never experienced wildfires on this scale. They mean, not during the Holocene epoch. We’re seeing a phenomenon new to our geological timeline. It is the Anthropocene now, as of two minutes ago and it is hot because we are making the climate now, and we’ve erected a greenhouse over ourselves.