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Dust storms can suspend large quantities of sand and cause haze in the boundary layer over local and regional scales. Iraq is one of the countries that is often impacted to a large degree by the occurrences of dust storms. Sand and dust storms (SDSs), which present environmental risks and affect the regional climate, have been worsened in the East Asian regions over the last decade. Monitoring SDS from space using satellite remote sensing (RS) has become one of the most important issues in this field. We investigate the sand and dust storms detection in Iraq using Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data, both from Terra and Aqua satellite systems for the year 2022. MODIS Surface Reflectance Daily L2G Global 1 km and 500 m data were utilized to calculate the Normalized Difference Dust Index (NDDI). The MYD09GA V006 product was used to monitor, map, and assess the development and spread of dust storms over the arid and semi-arid territories of Iraq. And BT thermal emissive band (MODIS band 31) can discriminate aerial and surface sand and dust over Iraq. Normalized Difference Dust Index (NDDI) is applied for the detection of sand and dust storms. We set thresholds for NDDI to distinguish between water and/or ice cloud and ground features and dust storms and BT to distinguish airborne dust from ground sand or dust. In addition, the data from Modis satellite, and meteorological stations from IMOS are used to validate NDDI-based sand and dust storm events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of the spatial and temporal dust storms and their trends is very important for climate change where dust storms consider a significant environmental problem and one of the most effective meteorological phenomena that affect climate change, deforestation and drought, which are reflected on the human health, economic aspects. This research aims to investigate trends of numbers of dust storms and their behavior in thirteen meteorological stations spreads all over Iraq for the period 1980-2018. The trends of Dust storms included monthly data of dust storms occurrences which were analyzed spatially and temporally using the linear regression method, and spatially represented by using ArcGIS. Nonparametric statistic was applied to determine the significance of the trends. Generally, the months (April May June) have the most occurrence values which mean it occurs between springs and summer seasons. Annual analysis is indicated that highest number of dust storms occurrence happens in Nasiriya, Kerbela, Baghdad, stations respectively. In the summer season eight of the thirteen stations which are (Mosul, Kirkuk, Romadi, Baghdad, Koot Al Hai, Najaf, Diwaniya and Semawa) show a significant positive trend (Increasing) during the study period while the other five stations show a negative trend (Decreasing). Annually, the behavior of the number of dust storms for the thirteen stations shows that five of the thirteen stations which are (Kirkuk, Romadi, Koot Al Hai, Najaf and Semawa) show a significant positive trend (Increasing) during the study period while the other eight stations show a negative trend (Decreasing). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is the most prominent Greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere. The increasing of CO2 has a significant impact on climate change. The Wind is one of the important climatic factors in climate studies and are more important in explaining the climatic conditions of any site because they affect weather conditions. This study was aimed to use GIS techniques on knowing the effect of wind on the concentration of carbon dioxide through mapping of seasonal and annual concentration carbon dioxide and wind speed and direction over Iraq. Results showed that there is an inverse relationship between wind speed and the concentration of carbon dioxide. And high wind speeds seem to decrease the concentration of carbon dioxide and vice versa. In the spring, despite the high wind speed in the western region, the concentration of carbon dioxide is high, due of the desert nature of the western region, to human activity and abundance sources of CO2 at these regions and a shortage of CO2 removal with absence of the vegetation cover. Horizontal wind movement helps move carbon dioxide to other regions away from the source area and then mixes it with new winds, thus reducing the concentration of carbon dioxide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]