A cloud of sand coming from the Sahara desert approaches the Brazilian coast. Satellite sensor records showed the material ‘traveling’ in the atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean, already close to the coast of northeast Brazil, NOAA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, reported.
The ‘trip’ of sand from the African desert should continue over the next few days over the Atlantic Ocean and will reach the continental areas of South America and the Caribbean, including the northernmost states of Brazil. This is what the numerical modeling of the European Union’s Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service indicates in its aerosol optical depth projections.
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The Saharan sand cloud moving across the Atlantic Ocean off Africa is nothing new. Large volumes of desert dust routinely advance into the Atlantic Ocean, mainly from late spring to early autumn in the Northern Hemisphere. If large enough and with favorable winds, the dust can travel thousands of kilometers across the Atlantic to Central and North America and the northernmost areas of South America.
Saharan dust arrives with extremely dry air and this tends to inhibit the formation of tropical cyclones such as tropical storms and hurricanes. A tropical cyclone needs a warm, humid and calm environment. Therefore, in the short term, the North Atlantic hurricane season will be very calm.
A study from NASA data showed that dust from the Sahara is beneficial to our Amazon rainforest, serving as “food” for the rainforest. Transoceanic travel from one continent to another, according to the researchers, is important because of what’s in the dust.
Dust raised from the Bodélé depression in Chad, an ancient lake bed formed by rocky minerals composed of dead microorganisms, is loaded with phosphorus. It is an essential nutrient for protein and plant growth, on which the Amazon rainforest depends to flourish.
Nutrients, the same found in commercial fertilizers, are scarce in Amazonian soils. Decaying fallen leaves and organic matter provide most of the nutrients, which are quickly absorbed by plants and trees after entering the soil. Some nutrients, however, including phosphorus, are washed away by rain into streams and rivers.
Phosphorus that reaches Amazonian soils from dust in the Sahara, an estimated 22,000 tons a year, is almost the same amount lost by rain and flooding. The discovery is part of a larger research effort to understand the role of dust and aerosols in the environment and in the local and global climate.
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