A series of blood-orange sunsets in southern Spain this week are NOT the result of the ‘calima’ phenomenon, experts have confirmed.
Over the past few days, Spanish social media has lit up with snaps of red skies and a faint grey film stretching across the horizon.
From Granada to Huelva, users guessed it was another round of calima, the typical dust cloud that blows in from Africa.
However, it is in fact smoke that has travelled from the infernos raging thousands of kilometers away in the Canadian wilderness.
Wildfires are currently tearing through the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, devastating landscapes.
And now, they’ve managed to export their smoke across the Atlantic Ocean, with the huge clouds being picked up by satellite images.
The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS), which keeps tabs on air quality and atmospheric movements, has been tracking the smoke’s trans-Atlantic voyage.
Its data shows it arriving in waves, particularly over the southwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula.
Weather accounts across Spain have been quick to clear up the confusion.
GranadaMeteo posted a sunset photo with the caption: ‘Smoke from the Canadian fires in Granada this evening.’
MeteoHuelva followed with: ‘If you see the cloudy, reddish sky, it’s not calima. It’s smoke from the terrible fires ravaging Canada.’
The smoke is mostly drifting through upper layers of the atmosphere. According to CAMS, it’s unlikely to cause major issues for surface-level air quality.
