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Things Will Soon Be Heating Up in Kuwaiti Desert, Meteorologically

Aired March 10, 2003 - 15:38   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Things will soon be heating up on the Kuwaiti desert and in the Iraqi desert, and we're not talking militarily; we're talking meteorologically. An enemy facing anybody who wages war in the Persian Gulf in the spring, summer or fall, CNN's Richard Blystone checks the forecast.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICHARD BLYSTONE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Cool breezes in the desert, sunny and dry. Great weather for anything; even maybe a war. But not for long.

This time of year brings a green fringe to the Kuwaiti wasteland, and people flock to their campsites to enjoy their desert heritage. But not for long. Kuwaitis call this old lady's winter, and by tradition, it ends March 8. Soon, they'll pack up and go back to their air conditioned city, pull down the shutters, and get their weather second hand.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This does the job.

BLYSTONE: High tech and low unite at this U.S. Marine camp, where meteorologists forecast not just the temperature, but the wind and the dust and the dry. The climate in this region is Baghdad's least secret weapon. Two weeks from now, the day's high will be in the mid 80s Fahrenheit. Another couple of weeks, the high 90s.

CAPT. RAYMOND HORN, U.S. MARINE CORPS: People are just going to naturally cut back some. They can't keep going at the same pace when it's 95 degrees by 75 degrees.

BLYSTONE: Troops on foot heading for action will be carrying about a third over their body weight in weapons, ammunition, water and protection against chemical or biological weapons. Commanders are reluctant to say how hot it has to be before ground troops can't function, but experienced soldiers say the high 80s to the mid 90s is about the limit.

If it comes to that, the allies could fight after dark with their night vision gear, but that's another story. Meanwhile, every day it gets a little hotter.

Richard Blystone, CNN, Kuwait.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: So here's the point in the program where we ask, well, just how is it? CNN's Jacqui Jeras joining us now with a little chalk talk, if you will, on the weather in that part of the world. And, well, in a word, it is very hot, right?

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Very hot, yes. In fact, the average high temperatures right now are in the lower to middle 70s, and they go up about 10 degrees on average eave month as we progress throughout the summer, just topping out in the month of July. The average high in July in Baghdad is 95 degrees.

Now, in addition to the searing summer heat, the other primary weather threat is dust storms into the spring and summer months. Now dust storms are a naturally occurring phenomena in this arid and semiarid climate, and they can move up to 200 million tons of mineral dust per year across the world.

And NOAA weather satellite has picked up one of the most recent dust storms, and this is really one of the more significant ones so far this season. It's very clearly to pick out if you look very closely. The big white cloud area that you see, that is around our low pressure cyclone. That's kind of a textbook example of a low- pressure storm. But it's back behind that where the dust storm is.

If you just look off the queue, you can see two little plumes right there of the dust. And then below it, in the southeastern parts of Iraq, you can see the light haze moving across the region. Now this happened on March 5, 6 and 7.

On average, there are about 20 to 25 dust storms per year. So how do they happen? Why do they occur? Well, it's a phenomena associated with vigorous northwestern winds that we call shamal (ph) winds, and they're generated by traveling low-pressure storm systems.

Those low-pressure storm systems track off to the east across the country, and winds rotate counterclockwise behind that area of low pressure. Those northwesterly winds can be very strong, between 50 and 60 miles per hour, and that's what helps to kick up some of this dust and raise it back into the atmosphere. It can be very localized or it can be very large scale. It can move thousands of miles across a continent, even move across the ocean, Miles.

Meterologists overall from the military have developed a forecast model that can predict these dust storms about 72 hours in advance. And we just learned today that NOAA has deployed some meteorologists into Iraq, and they're on the ground there with some remote sensing equipment to get a better idea of the current conditions and put that it into their computer models to forecast these dust storms and other weather hazards a little bit better.

O'BRIEN: Jacqui, I don't want to put you on the spot, but does NOAA take the lead on weather forecasting for the military? The military has their own forecasters as well, correct?

JERAS: That's right. These are actually - NOAA meteorologists, that's their main job. But they're also on reserve in the military and they have been deployed.

O'BRIEN: All right. Jacqui Jeras, thanks. That was interesting. Appreciate that.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com




Meteorologically>


Aired March 10, 2003 - 15:38   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Things will soon be heating up on the Kuwaiti desert and in the Iraqi desert, and we're not talking militarily; we're talking meteorologically. An enemy facing anybody who wages war in the Persian Gulf in the spring, summer or fall, CNN's Richard Blystone checks the forecast.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICHARD BLYSTONE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Cool breezes in the desert, sunny and dry. Great weather for anything; even maybe a war. But not for long.

This time of year brings a green fringe to the Kuwaiti wasteland, and people flock to their campsites to enjoy their desert heritage. But not for long. Kuwaitis call this old lady's winter, and by tradition, it ends March 8. Soon, they'll pack up and go back to their air conditioned city, pull down the shutters, and get their weather second hand.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This does the job.

BLYSTONE: High tech and low unite at this U.S. Marine camp, where meteorologists forecast not just the temperature, but the wind and the dust and the dry. The climate in this region is Baghdad's least secret weapon. Two weeks from now, the day's high will be in the mid 80s Fahrenheit. Another couple of weeks, the high 90s.

CAPT. RAYMOND HORN, U.S. MARINE CORPS: People are just going to naturally cut back some. They can't keep going at the same pace when it's 95 degrees by 75 degrees.

BLYSTONE: Troops on foot heading for action will be carrying about a third over their body weight in weapons, ammunition, water and protection against chemical or biological weapons. Commanders are reluctant to say how hot it has to be before ground troops can't function, but experienced soldiers say the high 80s to the mid 90s is about the limit.

If it comes to that, the allies could fight after dark with their night vision gear, but that's another story. Meanwhile, every day it gets a little hotter.

Richard Blystone, CNN, Kuwait.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

O'BRIEN: So here's the point in the program where we ask, well, just how is it? CNN's Jacqui Jeras joining us now with a little chalk talk, if you will, on the weather in that part of the world. And, well, in a word, it is very hot, right?

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Very hot, yes. In fact, the average high temperatures right now are in the lower to middle 70s, and they go up about 10 degrees on average eave month as we progress throughout the summer, just topping out in the month of July. The average high in July in Baghdad is 95 degrees.

Now, in addition to the searing summer heat, the other primary weather threat is dust storms into the spring and summer months. Now dust storms are a naturally occurring phenomena in this arid and semiarid climate, and they can move up to 200 million tons of mineral dust per year across the world.

And NOAA weather satellite has picked up one of the most recent dust storms, and this is really one of the more significant ones so far this season. It's very clearly to pick out if you look very closely. The big white cloud area that you see, that is around our low pressure cyclone. That's kind of a textbook example of a low- pressure storm. But it's back behind that where the dust storm is.

If you just look off the queue, you can see two little plumes right there of the dust. And then below it, in the southeastern parts of Iraq, you can see the light haze moving across the region. Now this happened on March 5, 6 and 7.

On average, there are about 20 to 25 dust storms per year. So how do they happen? Why do they occur? Well, it's a phenomena associated with vigorous northwestern winds that we call shamal (ph) winds, and they're generated by traveling low-pressure storm systems.

Those low-pressure storm systems track off to the east across the country, and winds rotate counterclockwise behind that area of low pressure. Those northwesterly winds can be very strong, between 50 and 60 miles per hour, and that's what helps to kick up some of this dust and raise it back into the atmosphere. It can be very localized or it can be very large scale. It can move thousands of miles across a continent, even move across the ocean, Miles.

Meterologists overall from the military have developed a forecast model that can predict these dust storms about 72 hours in advance. And we just learned today that NOAA has deployed some meteorologists into Iraq, and they're on the ground there with some remote sensing equipment to get a better idea of the current conditions and put that it into their computer models to forecast these dust storms and other weather hazards a little bit better.

O'BRIEN: Jacqui, I don't want to put you on the spot, but does NOAA take the lead on weather forecasting for the military? The military has their own forecasters as well, correct?

JERAS: That's right. These are actually - NOAA meteorologists, that's their main job. But they're also on reserve in the military and they have been deployed.

O'BRIEN: All right. Jacqui Jeras, thanks. That was interesting. Appreciate that.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com




Meteorologically>