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Dust From The Sahara | Earth Wise

July 9, 2020 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

hazardous air quality

A vast cloud of dust from the Sahara Desert blanketed the Caribbean in late June before drifting across the southeastern U.S.  The phenomenon is nothing new; only the magnitude of the occurrence this time around was unusual.  According to experts, this is the most significant Sahara dust event in 50 years.

The Sahara Desert is the major source on Earth of mineral dust, with some 60-200 million tons of it per year being lifted into the atmosphere.  Convection currents over hot desert areas lift the dust to very high altitudes.  From there, it can be transported worldwide by winds.   The dust, combined with the extremely hot, dry air of the Sahara Desert often forms an atmospheric layer called the Saharan Air Layer, which can have significant effects on tropical weather by interfering with the development of hurricanes.  The Saharan Air Layer typically moves across the North Atlantic every three to five days from late spring to early fall, peaking in the middle of the summer.  It can occupy a layer as much as two miles thick in the atmosphere.

The dust plume this summer was highly visible from space, covering thousands of miles of the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.

A common effect of Sahara dust is that normally blue skies can acquire a milky haze, but beyond that can lead to spectacular sunsets.  But apart from the visual spectacle, the dust can aggravate the conditions of people with asthma, respiratory illnesses, and allergies. On the positive side, as long as the dust is around, it is much less likely that tropical storms and hurricanes will form.

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Sahara dust blankets Caribbean, air quality hazardous

Photo, posted June 22, 2020, courtesy of Sagar Rana via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Saving Beaches With Seagrass

February 22, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Almost a quarter of the Gross Domestic Product of places around the Caribbean Sea is earned from tourism.  Preserving the beaches in the region is an economic imperative.  With increasing coastal development, the natural flow of water and sand is disrupted, natural ecosystems are damaged, and many tropical beaches simply disappear into the sea.

With such high stakes, expensive coastal engineering efforts such as repeated replenishing of sand and the construction of concrete protective walls are common strategies.  Rising sea levels and increasingly powerful storms only increase the threat to tropical beaches.

Researchers from The Netherlands and Mexico recently published a study in the journal BioScience on the effectiveness of seagrass in holding onto sand and sediment along shorelines.

Seagrasses are so-named because most species have long green, grass-like leaves. They are often confused with seaweeds but are actually more closely related to flowering plants seen on land. Seagrasses have roots, stems and leaves, and produce flowers and seeds. Seagrasses can form dense underwater meadows and are one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. Seagrasses provide shelter and food to an incredibly diverse community of animals, from tiny invertebrates to large fish, crabs, turtles, marine mammals and birds.

The researchers performed measurements of the ability of seagrass along Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula coastline to keep sand in place and prevent erosion.  They found that the amount of erosion was strongly linked to the amount of vegetation.  Quite often, seagrass beds have been regarded as a nuisance, rather than a valuable asset for preserving valuable coastlines.  The study opens opportunities for developing new tropical beach protection schemes in which ecology is integrated into engineering solutions.

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Seagrass Saves Beaches and Money

Photo, posted October 13, 2010, courtesy of NOAA via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Urban Darwinism

May 31, 2018 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/EW-05-31-18-Urban-Darwinism.mp3

Scientists refer to the time in which we now live as the Anthropocene epoch – one in which humans are exerting a tremendous influence upon the natural world.  One of the ways in which we are doing that is in our cities and suburbs where creatures are evolving through fast-paced natural selection to deal with our presence.

[Read more…] about Urban Darwinism

Climate Change And Hurricanes

October 4, 2017 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/EW-10-04-17-Climate-Change-and-Hurricanes.mp3

No single weather event can be attributed to climate change.   Storms, floods and droughts have always happened and some of them have always been severe.   However, two centuries of people burning fossil fuels has altered temperatures just enough that some of the storms we have seen in recent times have been much worse than they otherwise would have been.

[Read more…] about Climate Change And Hurricanes

Some Good News For Coral Reefs

August 12, 2016 By WAMC WEB

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/EW-08-12-16-Good-News-for-Coral-Reefs.mp3

Most recent news about coral reefs around the world has been bad news.  There has been unprecedented coral bleaching in places like Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.   The effects of climate change – including warming temperatures and rising seas – as well as the recent El Niño event have led to damaged reefs across the globe.

[Read more…] about Some Good News For Coral Reefs

A Wind-Solar Streetlight

April 29, 2016 By WAMC WEB

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/EW-04-29-16-Wind-Solar-Streetlight.mp3

The Caribbean island nation of Grenada has installed a wind and solar powered off-grid streetlight.   An Irish company called airsynergy has developed the underlying technology which it calls a Remote Power Unit or RPU.

[Read more…] about A Wind-Solar Streetlight

Who Needs Aedes Mosquitoes?

March 29, 2016 By WAMC WEB

https://earthwiseradio.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/EW-03-29-16-Aedes-Threat.mp3

There are approximately 3,500 mosquito species in the world. Of those, only a few hundred are known to bite humans. And just two have adapted to breed almost exclusively in urban environments where they are in close proximity to people.

[Read more…] about Who Needs Aedes Mosquitoes?

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