Saturday, October 4, 2008

Tiny dust particles from Sahara could help scientists study climate change

Science Daily: Scientists of the Soil Science and Geopharmacy Research Group of the University of Granada (Spain), directed by Rafael Delgado, have discovered and characterized a new type of atmospheric aerosols named "iberulites," which could be useful for the study of relevant atmospheric reactions from Earth.

Researchers José Luis Díaz Hernández, of the Andalusian Research and Farming, Fishing, Food, and Ecological Production Training Institute (IFAPA) and Jesús Párraga Martínez, of the Department of Edaphology and Farming Chemistry of the University of Granada, have insisted that such iberulites form in the troposphere from mineral small grains emitted from desert soils and bordering regions, burst into the atmosphere in a chaotic way, collect water vapour which becomes condensed and make up little rain drops.

…Such small drops of water and mineral dust grow in size as they collide with others and capture more dust, and are subject to characteristic hydrodynamic processes. As they get dry, they are swept away by powerful air drafts. During this trip – which can take several days – the iberolites experience a series of physical-chemical reactions and processes simultaneously, such as the incorporation of SO2 from volcanic areas (the Canary Islands), or the adhesion of planktonic organisms, virus and marine salts in the surface of the immature iberulite as they get close to the Atlantic area of Portugal, Morocco and the Gulf of Cádiz. The images of the iberulites taken with electronic microscopy, carried out in the Centre for Scientific Instrumentation of the UGR, are quite novel and give evidence of it…..

The Sahara in Algeria, shot by Florence Devouard (Anthere), Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2

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