From Nature Middle East, 7 December 2021:
Atmospheric rivers are long stretches of cloud that can carry enormous quantities of water vapour from the tropics towards the poles. They were first described in 19941 and since then have come to be understood as the major mechanism transporting moisture from lower latitude oceans to higher latitude land masses, where they dump that moisture as snow and rain.
It now appears that atmospheric rivers could be transporting dust as well as water. In February 2021, satellite images showed two separate events in which vast dust plumes could be seen extending from the Sahara Desert in northwest Africa towards Europe, extending all the way up to Scandinavia. At the same time, the snow depth across the European Alps declined by around 50%. Read more.
Bianca Nogrady 