Sahara Clouds Dust. Their presence in Cuba

Abstract

The Sahara Dust Storms bring million tons of dust into the atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean with a marked trend in space and time. The biggest amount of dust moves into the Caribbean Sea in Summer. Together with these dust clouds, made up of different mineral compounds, huge amounts of bioparticles, such as viruses, bacteria, funguses, etc., are incorporated into the atmosphere. These events play a fundamental role in their transportation. They also contribute to propagate microorganisms and pathogenic agents in large distances. Thus, a bridge between continents is established. Microorganisms and pathogenic agents impact ecosystems located thousands kilometers leeward the source regions by affecting its health. Geographic dissemination of pathogenic agents acquires then a new dimension. Among the mineral Sahara Dust components, PM10, PM2.5 and Superfines particles play an important role due to their impact on human health, mainly in respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. These dust clouds also affect heavily the weather and climate in regions under their influence. The purpose of this research is to characterize the presence of the Sahara dust clouds in Cuba and in each and every province, including Isle of Youth municipality during the period 1998-2009. This paper work is based on the information obtained from different satellites and sensors and leans on digital image processing techniques and on multivariate statistic.