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Report on the Chulmleigh floods 12 July 1982. South West Water. Copy available at Charldon Hill Research Station. Correspondence to: Colin Clark colin4chrs@hotmail.com © 2015 Royal Meteorological Society doi:10.1002/wea.2347 Saharan dust transport are identified in the context of two sample mud rain events in Istanbul: those of 11 February 2010 and 8 March 2010. Meteorological conditions are discussed with the help of numerical modelling, ground-based wind observa- tions and EUMETSAT’s MSG (Meteosat Second Generation) satellite system Dust- RGB products for each case. Meteorological conditions during two cases Before mud rain events in Turkey, the colour of the sky may turn grey or even yellow or orange for a few hours. On 10 February 2010 dust clouds appeared in the sky over Istanbul and caused mud rain during the night. The second case associated with an orange sky was on 8 March 2010. In the Dust has an important influence on climate through its effects on meteorological proc- esses such as radiative transfer and cloud formation (Levin et al., 1996; Ramanathan et al., 2001; Sokolik et al., 2001; Kaufman et al., 2005; Jiang et al., 2006; Teller and Levin, 2006). As a free aerosol, dust causes respiratory system problems as well as other health issues (Griffin and Kellogg, 2004) and is also responsible for injuries and deaths from transport accidents during dust storms (Goudie, 2014). In Turkey, the coloured precipitation con- taining dust is known as ‘çamur yağmuru’ or ‘mud rain’ (Figure 1) and is observed in late winter and early spring in particular. The aim of this paper is to show that mud rain in Turkey may occur when Saharan dust is transported by Mediterranean cyclones. Typical synoptic situations associated with Şeyda Tilev-Tanriover 1 and Abdullah Kahraman 2,3 1 Department of Meteorological Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey 2 Turkish State Meteorological Service, ITU Met-Office, Istanbul, Turkey 3 Graduate School of Science, Engineering and Technology, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey Introduction The Sahara Desert is the largest dust source on Earth. Its dust is frequently emitted into the Mediterranean atmosphere and, as shown by number of studies, transported by the winds sometimes as far north as central Europe (e.g. Sodemann et al., 2005). Saharan dust transport by Mediterranean cyclones causing mud rain in Istanbul