On its website, NASA shows a satellite image with Cyprus in the center saying “a dust plume stretches over the eastern Mediterranean, shrouding parts of Greece, Turkey, and Cyprus. NASA’s EMIT mission will help scientists better understand how airborne dust affects climate”. https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/thumbnails/image/1-emit-1041.jpg
It says that each year, strong winds carry more than a billion metric tons – or the weight of 10,000 aircraft carriers – of mineral dust from Earth’s deserts and other dry regions through the atmosphere. While scientists know that the dust affects the environment and climate, they don’t have enough data to determine, in detail, what those effects are or may be in the future – at least not yet.
The mission will identify the composition of mineral dust from Earth’s arid regions, it will help scientists understand how dust affects different Earth processes, its data will improve the accuracy of climate models and it will help scientists predict how future climate scenarios will affect the type and amount of dust in our atmosphere.
Moreover, it will clarify whether mineral dust heats or cools the planet. NASA says that right now, scientists don’t know whether mineral dust has a cumulative heating or cooling effect on the planet. That’s because dust particles in the atmosphere have different properties. For instance, some particles may be dark red, while others may be white.
“The color matters because it determines whether the dust will absorb the Sun’s energy, as dark-colored minerals do, or reflect it, as light-colored minerals do. If more of the dust absorbs the Sun’s energy than reflects it, it’ll warm the planet, and vice versa” it says.
EMIT will provide a detailed picture of how much dust comes from dark versus light minerals. That information will allow scientists to determine whether dust heats or cools the planet overall, as well as regionally and locally, NASA says.
Source: Cyprus News Agency