Every year, millions of tons of Saharan dust flies 3,000 miles across the Atlantic to the Amazon basin, where it settles in and helps plants grow.
Since 2007, NASA's Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO) has been monitoring the particles as they travel from Africa to South America, and the plumes can be spotted from space. On average, 182 million tons of dust leaves Africa annually, and of that amount about 27 million tons make it to the Amazon. Once there, it replenishes phosphorous lost from surface runoff and flooding. "Using satellites to get a clear picture of dust is important for understand and eventually using computers to model where that dust will go now and in future climate scenarios," NASA research scientist Hongbin Yu said. —Catherine Garcia
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