Although the thick plume of Saharan dust that blanketed Barbados over the weekend has moved away from the island, international atmospheric scientists are warning that additional dust could reach the region in the coming days.

Mark Parrington, senior scientist with the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), in an exclusive with this newspaper said the dust event that affected Barbados forms part of a much larger trans-Atlantic phenomenon that stretched thousands of miles from the west coast of Africa to the Caribbean basin.

The plume was tracked by CAMS (Copernicus is the European Union’s Earth Observation Programme), using satellite observations and atmospheric modelling, with data showing significant impacts across the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands.