“Dust can deliver nutrients to ecosystems thousands of miles away. Dust also plays a role in ecosystem and human health,” Clark said. Dark dust, including dust with iron oxides may cause warming, whereas light dust may result in cooling. Depending on the composition of the dust, it can cool or warm the planet. “Understanding the dust composition is key to understanding the warming versus cooling and by how much, both on regional and global scales. Particles from North Africa can travel thousands of miles around the globe, sparking phytoplankton blooms, seeding Amazonian rainforests with nutrients, and blanketing some American cities in a veil of grit also absorbing and scattering sunlight. Also known as mineral dust or desert dust, it can influence weather, hasten snowmelt, and fertilize plants on land and in the ocean.

“The mineralogy will be sampled every 60- by 60-meter area in arid regions of the Earth, not just a small lab sample, and will measure more than a billion locations, giving us a far better picture of the minerals in dust-generating regions.”īlown by wind across continents and oceans, dust does more than make skies hazy, congest lungs, and leave a film on windshields.

EMIT will collect more than 1 billion usable measurements for the arid regions of the world,” said Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Roger Clark, a Co-Investigator on the EMIT mission. “Currently, the dust impacts of climate change are based on about 5,000 samples of soilįor the entire Earth. NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) mission, which launched today, will greatly broaden scientists’ view of areas affected by mineral dust. The EMIT team will use the identifications of minerals in arid regions to study the climate impacts of dust.Ī new instrument headed to the International Space Station (ISS) will help researchers learn how dust storms heat or cool the planet. Tetracorder produces maps of hundreds of materials so this is one of many summary products. Each color on the image represents identification of a specific mineral or group of minerals in this Tetracorder standard product. Mineral mapping results of the Salton Sea area in California, USA from Tetracorder analysis of NASA Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) data. Visit to see a video on EMIT’s Tetracorder.

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