Earlier this month, winds brought clouds of dust from the Sahara Desert north towards the Mediterranean Sea and across Europe. A new animation from NASA shows the highest concentration of dust and its movement throughout the region from March 1 to March 9. The graphic shows dust column mass density, which is a measure of the amount of dust contained in a column of air. Some of the dust particles reached the ground as rain and coated the surface with a brown colored residue. More frequent and intense winter dust events have affected Europe in recent years, according to some new research.