Investigating the Trend of Changes and Correlation Between the Occurrence of Dust in Iran

Dust phenomenon is one of the destructive and common phenomena in arid and desert areas of Iran and the world that has harmful effects on human life and the environment. The purpose of this study is to statistically investigate the number of dust occurrences for the period 1990 to 2016 for the whole of Iran. In this study, the number changes of dust occurrences in months of the studied years (1990-2016) were analyzed at 30 stations in the country, and the correlation between stations at four regions and the whole country was investigated. The results of the occurrence number of dust in different seasons in the country indicated that the highest and lowest occurrence of dust in the country were in summer and winter, respectively. The highest and lowest dust levels were on July and December, respectively, in most stations in the country compared to other months. Also, the results showed that Zabol and Zanjan had the highest and lowest dust levels with 3666 and 130 events during the year, respectively. Most of the stations in the country had a significant correlation in terms of dust occurrence at the level of 95 and 99%, which indicates that almost most of the country have similar conditions in terms of dust storm. The results also showed that the stations that were geographically close to each other had a higher correlation coefficient.