Dubai has been ranked highly in a global index for an unwelcome reason this week: it has been named among the top 10 most polluted cities in the world.
The designation by the air purifier company IQAir, which refers to current conditions rather than the long-term average, results from an increase in pollution that has cut visibility.
The key factor behind the conditions in Dubai and other parts of the UAE is that the country is “under the influence of a massive dust storm originating in Iran”, said Dr Diana Francis, a researcher who leads the environmental and geophysical sciences lab at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi.
The dust storm is causing, Dr Francis explained, a rise in the concentration of particulate matter (PM), along with other knock-on effects.
“So an increase in PM concentrations, as well as of secondary pollutants resulting from interactions between primary pollutants and dust aerosols, is expected to affect the UAE and Dubai in particular [because it is downwind of the area emitting dust] for a few days,” she said.
What is the forecast?
In an update published on Thursday, the UAE’s National Centre of Meteorology (NCM) said that easterly winds bringing in dust and sand over the sea were continuing. In some areas, the NCM said, visibility was less than 3,000 metres.
Tying in with this, IQAir said
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