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Dust storms, produced by the removal of surface materials from the world's drylands, are a vital component of the environment. This is because of their role in biogeochemical cycling, their potential influence on climate, their role in sediment accumulation and their influence on human affairs. This book, which is exhaustively referenced, explores and summarises recent research on where dust storms originate, why dust storms are generated, where dust is transported and deposited, the nature of dust deposits and the changing frequency of dust storms over a range of time-scales.

Dust storms are widespread in the Middle East and their gen eral distribution is known from climatic data from ground mete orological stations. However, the Total Ozone Mapping Spec trometer (TOMS) enables a more perfect picture to be gained for those many areas where meteorological data are sparse. TOMS analysis permits the seasonal pattern of dust storm activ ity, the spatial pattern of dust storm activity and the passage of major dust events to be plotted. The summer months are the time of greatest dust storm activity, and the borderland between Oman and Saudi Arabia seems to have the greatest level of dust activity in the area. From time to time major dust-producing sys tems cross from the northern Sahara and from the Red Sea region into Arabia. For reasons that are not clear, the Kuwait-southern Iraq area does not appear to be such a significant dust source region as the meteorological data would suggest.