esidents have been waking up to a country enveloped in a haze of dust for two days, severely lowing visibility, causing disruptions to flight operations and leading to slow moving traffic.

"What happened in the UAE is not a dust or sandstorm. At NCM we don't call this a storm. This is dust suspension," says Dr Ahmed Habib from the NCM.

Dr Habib says, "This dust suspension comes from the South and South-east of the country. There is low pressure in the South associated with fresh and strong winds in the South-east of the UAE…between the UAE and Oman. So, a sandstorm has occurred there, not here."

"The wind direction blew the sand to our country over the UAE leading to a loss in visibility. But there is no fresh wind here. The dusty air mass from their area moved to our area. So, here we actually didn't witness the occurrence of either dust or sandstorm.

Both are different phenomena, though both are made up of soil particles. Sandstorms mainly constitute sand particles with a local impact, as gravity does not allow sand particles to be displaced a great distance.

But dust particles are different since they are made up of silt and clay, which form natural colloidal and nanoparticles. The dust particles' impact can apparently spread far wider, sometimes even across continents.

Dr Habib highlights another key difference: "Wind speed in sandstorm is less than the wind speed in dust storm. Therefore, dust storm has accelerated wind speed."