Climate change in Hungary? – lakes drying up and Saharan dust everywhere

It is not rare that dust from the Sahara reaches Hungary; however, its quantity is exceptional these days. Furthermore, many soda lakes in the Great Hungarian Plain dried up which many see as a clear sign of climate change.

Lakes dry out

The Hungarian Ornithological and Nature Conservation Society’s group of Csongrád county warned about the drying of two soda lakes on Facebook. They wrote that it is not exceptional that water evaporates from  Büdös-szék soda lake in every eighth year in August. However, it is quite unusual that even in April there is nothing in it but dust – szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu reported. They stated that

something similar did not happen from time immemorial.

“The soda lake in which crowds of birds should be breeding is now empty and dusty. The White Lake of Kardoskút is in a similar situation like many other water habitats in the Southern part of the Great Hungarian Plain” – they added. They said that it is not yet known whether the cause is the extreme drought and the lack of rain or the climate change reached in Hungary.

Blood rains, orange sunsets

It is not exceptional; too, that Saharan dust sometimes reaches Hungary. However, these days its quantity is so great like it was only years before – 444.hu wrote. In fact, the phenomenon was reported by a dust storm expert of the Research Centre for Natural Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, György Varga. The dust storm may cause

Orange sunsets, red Alpine snow-fields, and mud rains.

The phenomenon is called intense Saharan dust event which means that ten millions of tonnes of desert dust gets into the atmosphere and with it even ten thousand kilometres away from Africa. Hungarian meteorologists were warned before by the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre that in the final days of April a vast dust storm should be expected. This is what covered the whole of Europe even Iceland and Greenland with dust these days. Though it is not harmful to health, in the Northern regions the phenomenon is very dangerous since dust covers snow-fields which darkens them and results in warming and the melting of the ice.

The dust particles that reached Hungary are as big as the flour’s, but they can cause so-called “blood rains” because their colour is reddish orange when they fall down together with water from the atmosphere.

Source: 444.hu, szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu