Believe It Or Not, A Dust Storm In Greenland

Satellite view of a dust storm in Greenland of all places. Yep, they
can happen there and it's NOT global warming

We all think of Greenland as an incredible cold, forbidding place. It's basically an enormous pile of ice.

But as the Weather Channel points out, you can actually get dust storms up there. A satellite passing overhead recently took a photo of one.

These dust storms aren't anything huge like you see in the Desert Southwest or near the Sahara Desert or something like that. But they do get cranking up in Greenland.

They get going close to the coast, where snow and ice usually melt away during the summer.

Here's how it all happens:

Water from melting glaciers flows into a flood plain, then either recedes or evaporates. The sediment left behind consists of a very fine powder called glacial flour, which is created by the grinding of glaciers and pulverizing rock.

When the glacial flour dries out, strong winds can send it airborne, creating these far northern dust storms.

Unlike seemingly everything else that goes on in Greenland, which seems to be the go-to bellwether for climate change, the dust storms have nothing to do with global warming.

These little Greenland dust storms have been reported over many decades. Satellite photos rarely capture them because it's usually too cloudy to see them. This time, the skies cleared and the satellite got a nice shot of this dust storm.