The League of Arab States, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UN-ESCWA), UN Environment, and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) jointly organized a Regional Training Workshop on Sand and Dust Storms in the Arab Region in Cairo, Egypt from 10 to 12 February 2018. The workshop was hosted by the Egyptian Meteorological Authority and was conducted in collaboration with the European Organization for Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT), the State Meteorological Agency of Spain (AEMET) and the Barcelona Supercomputer Center (BSC).

The objectives of the workshop were to: enhance the technical capacities of operational and research meteorologists from Arab States on the analysis, prediction and projection of sand and dust storms, including the use of ground and satellite observations of dust, dust storm modeling and prediction, dust classification, data assimilation in dust models, etc; enhance the understanding of the multi-dimensional impacts of sand and dust storms and their impacts on socio-economic sectors and ecosystems; and discuss opportunities for furthering collective regional work on sand and dust storms at the regional level in view of supporting the coordination of joint activities. The workshop was complemented by the second meeting of the Arab Climate Outlook Forum (ArabCOF).