NASA publishes a photo of dusty haze over Tashkent

As Earth.com reports, the unusual dust storm was caused by an anticyclonic storm with wind speeds of up to 55 mph (88 km per hour).

According to NASA, some of the dust probably came from dried up agricultural land, pastures and meadows to the northeast in the Turkestan region of Kazakhstan.

Earlier forecasters in Uzbekistan reported that the level of particulate matter (PM10) pollution rose to 18,000 micrograms per cubic meter. The dust concentration periodically reached a level 30 times higher than the safe one. According to Uzhydromet, over 150 years of keeping records, these are the most extreme dusty conditions that have never been observed in Tashkent.

“If the measurements are correct, these are really extreme and extremely dangerous levels of particulate matter for urban areas. The US EPA’s 24-hour average limit is, for example, 150 micrograms per cubic meter for PM10. The highest hourly concentrations I have ever seen recorded in El Paso, Texas – arguably the dustiest city in the United States – are around 5,000 micrograms per cubic meter of PM10,” Thomas Gill, a scientist at the University of Texas at El Paso, said.

In his opinion, these levels in Uzbekistan are about four times worse than in El Paso.

“This could be some of the highest PM10 values ever measured for ambient air in urban areas,” he said.

The NASA Earth Observatory image was taken on November 5 this year via the NASA Terra satellite.