And now for a short blog about… “Calima” …
Something unique to the Canaries, that one would probably never know or hear about should you not live here, is named Calima. When you hear Canarians talk about Calima, it almost sounds like they’re talking about a person: an old friend of theirs who they don’t really like, whose visits are unpredictable and difficult, but who they can’t quite get out of their life. When I finally asked what it was, I learned that what I had thought was weird fog or smog was actually a layer of Saharan desert dust that blows from the Sahara Desert over the ocean. I’ve included photos so you can see what it looks like from above. Naturally, our islands are the only things out in this ocean, so we too get covered in this dust. In English, it’s called SAL (Saharan Air Layer), but I like “Calima” much better. When you wake up in the morning and realize you probably need an air mask if you want to run, you don’t want to say “oh darn that Saharan Air Layer” – no, you want to say “Seriously Calima?! You were just here!!!” I joke, but Calima is both serious and dangerous and, apparently, climate saving. In the Canaries, I have students with asthma who can’t leave their houses, even for school, when Calima comes and elderly and asthmatics deaths increase with Calima. On the other hand, Calima dust carries phosphorous to the Amazon rain forest, which the Amazon depends on to survive. Here’s the link to the full story from NASA. (Not currently linking, so I’ll link it later, but here’s the page https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nasa-satellite-reveals-how-much-saharan-dust-feeds-amazon-s-plants) How each island experiences Calima is different. For Fuerteventura, for example, where the wind is super strong, apparently sand pelts cut against your skin and eye cover is necessary as the wind whips Calima across its essentially barren shores. Gran Canaria, where I am, it hangs in the air thickly, coating everything in its sand. On the worst days, I find it harder to breathe and I certainly can’t run. On clear-no-Calima days, I can see Tenerife from my house, on days with Calima, I can barely see the closest hill to me on Gran Canaria. The worst part about it to me is that it’s unpredictable; I never know when it will come or how long it will still. Plus, I haven’t found a way to see how bad it is (especially air quality) on any given day until you’re outside in daylight. This is frustrating to me because I want to know when I can run and when I shouldn’t run and I often run before daylight. I’ve asked some of the teachers at my school and they’ve all said they don’t know of anywhere that gives you that info, but if any other Fulbrighters or people living in the Canaries knows where I can get this info daily, please let me know, this would make my life considerably better. Anyway, if you hear me trying to explain that I’m covered in Saharan dust or complaining about air quality, now you know why. Living on an island has challenges that I expected and it certainly has challenges that I didn’t expect, Calima being one of the latter, though I, too, am beginning to think of her like an old friend I don’t really get along with, but who is just a little comforting because it means some order still exists in the world.
17 Comments
8/20/2022 07:39:09 pm
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November 2018
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