African dust: The satellite image and 10 photos from “orange” Attica

African dust “covered” almost the entire country today, while especially in Attica and in areas of the southern Peloponnese, it created eerie images, coloring the evening sky orange.

meteo.gr published the satellite image of African dust over Greece, noting that it was an “intense wave of African dust ‘Minerva red'” that affected the entire Eastern Mediterranean.

Apart from the African dust, meteo.gr recorded very high temperatures that occurred in areas of Southern Greece and mainly in Crete, where Falasarna in Chania recorded the highest temperature with a value of 36.6°C.

Lagouvardos in LiFO for African dust: Very powerful event, manifested in two phases

The director of the National Observatory of Athens described it as “very strong”. Kostas Lagouvardos the current episode of African dust in Greece, which has affected much of the country, but especially Crete and other parts of Southern Greece. Speaking to LiFO, Mr. Lagouvardos that due to its intensity, the phenomenon was named “Minerva Red” by the scientific team of meteo.gr, by analogy with the previous intense wave of African dust concentration in 2018, which had mainly affected Crete and was then called “Minoan Red”.

‘Minerva Red’ manifested in two phasesexplains Mr. Lagouvardos with a peak on Monday afternoon, to recede at night despite the southerlies and to return stronger at noon and Tuesday afternoon – in fact until 9 pm, very high concentrations of particles in the atmosphere were recorded, especially in Crete.

The National Observatory of Athens has a station for measuring African dust particles at Rethimno – as Crete is often affected – and as Mr. Lagouvardos told LiFO, this station recorded 300 micrograms (mg) of particles per cubic meter (m³) on Monday, while on Tuesday it reached 700 mg/m³when the average records are below 50. However, Mr. Lagouvardos points out that during the “Minoan Red” of 2018, concentrations of the order of 2000mg/m were recorded³.