Europe experiences regular Saharan dust transports across the Iberian peninsula, France, Spain that sometimes even reach central and northern Europe. In 2023, the first large-scale dust transport episode took place in mid-February. Taking this event as a case study, this short course will give you an overview of how you can use satellite and ground-based observation as well as model forecasts to monitor and forecast Saharan dust episodes.
The course consists of two parts: it will give you first a high-level introduction to the Saharan dust transport event in February 2023 and relevant data that can be used to monitor and forecast such events. This high-level introduction is followed by a practical data exploration part. This part gives you a hands-on introduction to satellite-, ground- and model-based data for dust monitoring and forecasting. For each dataset featured, you will learn how to access, process, visualize and interpret it.