In this article Yoram Kaufman and his team present a new way to calculate the desert dust flux over the Atlantic Ocean, which reveals for the first time the actual amount of dust which is transported each year from the Saharan Desert .
Desert dust covers large extends of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It has intriguing effects on the world`s life cycle, therefore it is important to study emissions from the deserts and transport from one continent to another.
It is a main source of nutrients to oceanic biota and the Amazon forest. For example, Iron contained in aeolian dust was shown to be an important micro-nutrient for ocean phytoplankton, which could contribute to fluctuation of CO 2 on climatic time scales and contribute to climate variations.
It affects the Earth radiation budget, thus participating in climate change as a feedback mechanisms. Desert dust interact with solar and thermal radiation, thus can modulate the Earth radiation balance in response to changing climate conditions . Dust particles can also interact with clouds, mainly after absorbing hygroscopic material, therefore making changes in precipitation in the Soudano-Sahel region. Dust also affects photolysis rates and heterogeneous reactions for ozone chemistry, by changing the concentration of UV radiation.
Click on image to see 3 different representations
These images show a dust storm (sand color) emerging to the Atlantic
Ocean south of the Sahara and circulating in the Atlantic ocean back to Northern Africa
taken from http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery. Note that fires (red dots) in the south
emit smoke into the dusty atmosphere. The image was taken from the Aqua satellite
March 6, 2004.
