Study: Dust may dampen hurricane fury

An image, captured on Sept. 4, 2005, by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer aboard NASA’s TERRA satellite, shows a massive dust storm (in yellow) blowing off the western coast of Africa over the Atlantic Ocean. Amato Evan, a researcher at the UW-Madison Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies, has found a surprising link between hurricane frequency in the Atlantic Ocean and dust storms that periodically rise up from the Sahara desert and move west. Evan and others suggest that such atmospheric dust could be helping to “dampen” brewing hurricanes. Photo: NASA/courtesy Amato Evan