Middle East hot winds?

Question

In Iraq and Kuwait, on summer nights, a dry hot northwesterly wind (shamal) is a regular occurence. Sometimes it can cause temperatures to rise through the night despite clear skies. Where does it originate and why is it hot even at night?

Answer 1

I worked as a weather forecaster in Qatar once. If you look at a topographical map of the Middle East, there's a valley running from NW to SE through Iraq along the Euphrates river to Basra, then there's the Arabian Gulf. A strong westerly blow is channelled down this low-lying area. Here in NZ where I live now, we get a similar unpleasant weather phenomenon in which a strong westerly wind drops its moisture on the west coast before it climbs the Southern Alps and on our east coast we get a hot dry westerly wind full of positive ions which make you irritable and bitchy. In France they get the Mistral which is similar. In the Middle East you've got the additional problem of sand and poor visibility. I remember flying over Kuwait once and you could hardly see the ground, even though there wasn't any cloud. And the sand is hard on windows and car engines. The highest temperature ever recorded here in NZ was 42 Celsius in a northwester on our East Coast in Christchurch. When the wind drops its load of moisture on the windward side of a mountain range, the latent heat of condensation warms up the air, so the leeward side gets hot dry weather.

Answer 2

its mostly caused by hot dry air that loses its moisture, causing it to heat up more