Not a dust storm, just its consequences? What is really happening with air quality in Ukraine

On Monday, September 30, Ukrainian media were flooded with headlines about the dust storm that hit Ukraine. However, no official source of information used the term "dust storm" to describe what was happening in the air.

For example, the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Center wrote in its Facebook post that in the morning of September 30, a dust storm and high air pollution were observed in the Caspian lowland desert. Forecasters noted that "the dust raised in the Caspian Sea in the form of its smallest particles is heading towards Ukraine in the upper atmosphere." This was noted on the Facebook page Po Toi Bik Novyn.

"This fine dust settles in Ukraine in Poltava, Dnipro, Sumy, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk regions. A small amount also falls on the territory of Cherkasy and Kropyvnytskyi regions. The situation is aggravated by the local dryness of the earth's surface, adding local dust and soil particles to the pollination, which is blown by the wind," the statement said.

Back in April 2024, the Ukrainian Hydrometeorological Center refuted media warnings about a dust storm, explaining that desert dust is not a dust storm. According to the report, for a dust storm to be a dust storm, the wind speed must be above 12 m/s, and it must last for more than three hours.

However, it is not known for certain whether wind gusts of more than 12 m/s were recorded in Ukraine on September 30. The forecast for the day called for gusts of 7-12 m/s.

For his part, the head of the Cherkasy Regional Hydrometeorological Center, Vitaliy Postryhan, mentions the dust storm on Facebook only in the context of the reason for the "haze" that covered the region. He writes that haze is a continuous clouding of the air caused by the presence of suspended particles of dust, industrial, or smoke of other origin.

The reason for this phenomenon, according to Postryhan, is the cross-border transfer of air with dust particles from the Caspian lowland desert and other Asian regions to our region by southeast winds and smoke from fires in ecosystems.

"The proximity of the anticyclone centered over Northwest Kazakhstan and the cyclonic depression over the Black Sea caused a significant horizontal baric gradient, which led to an increase in southeast winds. As a result, severe dust storms arose and sand from the Caspian Sea began to spread over large areas, sometimes reducing visibility to 1-2 km," the expert explains.

At the same time, the dust storm was definitely recorded in southern Russia, as evidenced by the footage posted online. If you compare them with footage from Ukrainian cities, you can see a big difference.

Dust storm in the Russian city of Rostov:

Deterioration of air quality in Kharkiv:

As reported, residents of Ukraine could see a white "desert" Sun in the sky. The change in the color of the star is related to the perception of light by the human eye and the peculiarities of the atmosphere that the rays overcome.

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