Europe’s largest desert has “spread black dust” across the continent.
Iceland is home to the largest and most active desert in Europe. But instead of warm sandy dunes, they are made of black volcanic dust.
Like other deserts, it can produce dust storms in windy weather, known as “high latitude dust” which is able to reach mainland Europe.
“We found Icelandic black dust in Finland, but even Serbia,” says Pavla Dagsson-Waldhauserova, a researcher at the University of Agriculture of Iceland and president of the Icelandic Aerosol and Dust Association.
The UN has dubbed desertification, when lush areas turn into sandscapes through climate change, “among the greatest environmental challenges of our time”.
This is what has happened in Iceland, which would have once been a birch forest when Vikings originally settled on the island.
Over the centuries, attempts to cultivate the land using inappropriate techniques degraded the landscape and today, only 2% of Iceland is covered in woodland.
Work is underway currently to reforest the country, with modest aims to increase the woodland cover to 4% by 2050.
Once desertification has started it can be hard to stop. For about half of the year, dust from Iceland contaminates other parts of the island and Europe.
Volcanic eruptions also add more ash to the conditions.
“The most important impact on the climate is the depositing [of dust] on the cryosphere,” Dagsson-Waldhauserova told Euronews.
When the black sand in Iceland collects on glaciers in a layer of up to 1.3 centimetres, the heat it collects from the sun by being so dark melts the ice.
An estimated two billion tonnes of sand and dust enter the atmosphere every year, limiting visibility, causing health problems like respiratory illnesses and aiding in the forming of rain and ice clouds.
