Hey, where’s the winter we knew?

 Pedestrians geared up for Qatar’s winter in this recent archive photograph. If you follow the laws of the planets, then you end up with the confusing situation that winter only starts on December 21, so most of December isn’t actually in the winter.

Even taking the ‘Heat Island Effect’ into count, this year’s cold weather was surprisingly mild in Qatar, writes Steff Gaulter

Apparently that was winter. I have to say that it was really quite pitiful! We all know that it’s not likely to snow in Qatar, but it usually gets colder that we’ve seen over the past few months. Last year people were asking me when it was going to get warm. This year, a few people even asked me if it was going to get colder, because they missed a bit of a chill.

According to the World Meteorological Office, the average maximum temperature in Doha over the winter months (December to February) is 22.9ºC (73.2ºF). This year our maximum temperatures were 1.8ºC (3.3ºF) above that value, but it was at night where the real difference lay. With an average of 17ºC (62.6ºF), the minimum temperature was 3.2ºC (5.8ºF) above the figure quoted by the World Meteorological Office, and looking at the statistics over the last ten years, the winter temperatures have been consistently above the average.

A major reason that temperatures have risen so much at night is that cities are generally warmer than the surrounding countryside, particularly at night. The vast areas of cement and tarmac in large cities absorb the sun’s heat during the day, then slowly release it during the night. This effect is called the Heat Island Effect and often adds a few degrees to a city’s temperature. However, even taking that into account, this winter was still surprisingly mild.

Of course if you let the planets dictate the seasons then spring hasn’t actually officially started yet, but generally meteorological offices throughout the world stick with the convention that summer (or winter if you’re south of the equator) runs between December and February. Otherwise, if you follow the laws of the planets, then you end up with the confusing situation that winter only starts on December 21, so most of December isn’t actually in the winter.

Anyway, whether spring starts at the beginning of March, or over half way through the month, March is still my favourite month in Doha. The average maximum is 27ºC and the minimum is 17ºC. If weather could be like this year-round, I would be very happy.

However, we all know that the weather is not going to be constantly perfect, even for just one month. We could have the occasional day with fog or rain, but if you were in the country last March, you’ll no doubt remember the most significant other type of weather: sandstorms, and lots of them. Last year on ten separate days in March the visibility was reduced to three kilometres or less, thanks to some rather persistent sandstorms. That’s nearly one in three days ruined by dust!

Haze and dust are perpetual problems in Doha. There are two different types; there’s the dust that can sit, unmoved over the city for days or the violent sandstorm that rages in like an angry bull, blasting grit into your face and covering everything in a thin film of dust.

The home-grown pollution in Doha is usually construction dust or car exhaust. This lingers in the air until a wind finally blows in to clear it, or rain washes it out of the atmosphere. Every city produces a certain amount of pollution, but some cities find it far more difficult to clear the air than others. In Doha we have a certain geographical advantage in that Qatar is flat. This means that a clearing wind can come from any direction, unlike Los Angeles or Beijing which are mostly surrounded by mountains, so in order to clear the pollution, you need to wait until the wind comes from a specific direction.

Clearing in-house pollution is one thing, but a violent sandstorm is something else altogether. These slam in from the northwest, coating everything in a thick layer of dust. You may have heard me say before that sandstorms aren’t actually made of sand. Sand is pretty heavy and even a strong wind would have difficulty raising it over knee height. Clay particles, on the other hand, are far more aerodynamic. They’re small and flat, shaped a bit like a frisbee. The wind can easily pick up these particles, and throw them two or three thousand metres into the air. The sandstorms we see here in Doha, are usually made up of clay, often coming all the way from the Tigris or Euphrates Valleys in Iraq.

During the winter, there is usually a fair amount of rain in Iraq. This year there were pictures of flooding coming out of Baghdad in December and again at the beginning of February. The rain will dampen down the dust and silt in the riverbed and ensure that the particles aren’t picked up by the wind. However, as the summer approaches, the land is continuously baked by the sun; the rain becomes less frequent and the sun becomes stronger. This will ensure that the riverbed will dry out once more, and explains why March will usually have more dust storms than the previous few months.

Over the past few years, the weather in Iraq has not helped the air in Qatar stay clear and dust-free. Iraq has becoming steadily drier; vast regions which were once productive farmland have now become arid deserts. Iraq’s Ministry of Agriculture estimates that as much as 50% of the agricultural land from the 1970s is now barren wasteland. This is partly due to the sharp decline in the flow of the Euphrates and the Tigris, as neighbouring countries drain increasing amounts of water from the rivers before they even enter Iraq.

Clearly in order to predict the number of dust storms in Doha, we should keep a close eye on the weather in Iraq. We should all hope for rain, because it would be terrible if, again, dust storms ruined one of the few months in Qatar which didn’t have blistering hot weather.

(The author is Senior Weather Presenter at Al Jazeera English channel. She can be contacted on steff.gaulter@yahoo.co.uk or on Twitter at @WeatherSteff)