Pitt-Based Researchers Devise Technique to Predict Dust Storms With Infrared Satellite, Shows Potential for Global Monitoring
The method predicted 2008 dust storm at New Mexico’s White Sands Dune Field using temperature images from NASA’s Earth-orbiting ASTER instrument, team reports in the Journal of Geophysical Research Earth SurfacePITTSBURGH—Researchers based at the University of Pittsburgh have developed a method for predicting dust and sandstorms that uses infrared satellite images to determine when conditions are ripe for the destructive phenomena, a technique that could be implemented globally and that the research team used to forecast a 2008 New Mexico dust storm—the area’s largest in decades—two days