Climate change and Desert Dust Storms in Cyprus

The Eastern Mediterranean region is already experiencing the first results of climate change, as a highly vulnerable area to climate change. Latest reports indicate and highlight the strong impact of climate change across the Eastern Mediterranean area through increased average temperatures, reduced precipitation and recurrent dust storms of higher frequency and intensity.  In the decade 1998-2008, the frequency of dust storms in Cyprus has risen with an average pace of approximately 2 extra dust days per year. Since then, this trend persists, leading to an extended and annual increasing dust event period a year. 

The Cyprus Department of Meteorology adopts new services, tools and products. Evaluating and reviewing the available forecasting tools and techniques and upgrading partnerships with research institutes, universities and organizations across the Eastern Mediterranean region, were important steps in adjusting to the rapidly changing climate parameters and climate change results in the area of Cyprus.  Since 2017, the Cyprus Department of Meteorology supports the development and the implementation of a climate change adaptation strategy to dust storm events across the Eastern Mediterranean area through the LIFE project ‘MEDEA’ (Mitigating the Health Effects of Desert Dust Storms Using Exposure-Reduction Approaches), funded by the European Union.   

The Department of Meteorology (DoM) is the Authority responsible for all the issues concerning the weather and climate. Its mission is to collect and provide information related to weather and climate for all economic and social activities of the country in order to achieve high quality of services, the general welfare of the public and the protection of life and property of its citizens. In order to achieve these, the DoM runs its own numerical weather forecasting models and operates an extensive network of meteorological stations, consisting of 51 Automatic Weather Stations (A.W.S.), 77 conventional Rainfall stations, 12 conventional Climatological and 3 Synoptic stations. Synoptic stations have stuff from the DoM carrying out regular weather observations. At the station of Athalassa upper air observations are also carried out with daily radiosonde launches. Data from the A.W.S., are collected using telemetry in almost real time and are stored in the DoM’s database.