Satellite image shows Sahara dust cloud in Portugal | Photocaption

The first weekend of Spring was full of high temperatures, but also polluted by dust coming from Africa. And that’s exactly what an image taken by Copernicus satellites, the European Union’s Earth observation program, shows: a giant cloud of suspended dust that formed in the Sahara desert and was transported to Europe last week. In the image, dust can be seen above the ocean and near Aveiro.

In several regions of the country, the sky was cloudy and orange due to “suspended dust”: a mass of air coming from the deserts of North Africa, which carried suspended dust, caused concentrations of these inhalable particles to increase in recent days.

According to the Copernicus program, the dust reached the Canary Islands and the Iberian Peninsula. “In some of the affected areas, the rain associated with this dust can cause an orange ‘mud rain’”, says the Copernicus description that accompanies the image, taken by one of the Sentinel-2 satellites.

The Directorate-General for Health (DGS) warned that this would contribute to a situation of poor air quality, as these particles have an impact on human health, “mainly on the most sensitive population, children and the elderly, whose health care must be doubled during the occurrence of these situations”.

This situation was recorded on Friday, the 22nd (the same day that the Copernicus image was captured), and also over the weekend. The arrival of rain this Monday (accompanied by a drop in temperature of 10 degrees) caused the dust to disappear in Portugal. Now, until next Friday, the weather will be rainy, windy and snowfall, according to the Portuguese Institute of the Sea and Atmosphere (IPMA).