GEOGRAPHIC EXTREMES SOCIETY
AUSTRALIAN RECORDS
Dust Storms in Australia
The highest frequency of dust storms occurs in central Australia. Alice Springs sees an average of 10.8 dust storms per year with a maximum of sixty-five events in a single year. Massive dust storms which reach the east coast are generally restricted to the drier years during the El Nino cycle. It must be noted though, even though Australia is a very dry continent, our dry rangelands don’t produce much dust as compared to the Sahara, the Arabian Peninsula and the Gobi Desert. The Sahara produces almost twenty times the annual dust as Australia and the Gobi deserts dust causes constant problems for the densly populated Chinese east coast. In China, the recent profusion of dust storms is being blamed on overgrazing by goat herds. A problem Australian land managers make take heed of.
When we look back at the history of dust storms in Australia, the 1940s were by far the greatest incidence of dust storms. We measure duststorms by the Duststorm index, or just DSI and the DSI was far greater in the 1940s than today. Much of the blame for the early dust storms was laid at the feet of rabbits, who denuded southern Australian pastures for almost a century before the Myxoma virus was released in the 1950s. It also appears that since 1975, Australia’s average wind speed has dropped as land management techniquies improve.[i]
The much-lauded Red Dawn dust storm which blanketed Sydney and the entire eastern seaboard of the continent The Red Dawn dust storm engulfed eastern Australia on September 2009. It is particularly remembered in Sydney where it was estimated to be the largest since records began in the 1940’s in regards to loss of visibility. Since the 1960s we have also been able to measure dust particle loads driven aloft from dust storms. The Red Dawn storm carried up to 17.5 million tonnes of dust aloft and transported over 2.54 million tonnes offshore. The offshore component fell mainly into the Coral and Tasman Seas but also sent dust over New Zealand and as far away as the Andes in South America.
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