How does dust affect climate across the world? While we don’t think about it too often here in the Southeast, it is a big issue in other parts of the country and the world. Dust can affect the transmission of sunlight to the surface, coat the surfaces of glaciers (which affects how they melt), and sometimes transports nutrients from one region to another. In the Southeast, plumes of Saharan dust blowing off of Africa can suppress the development of tropical waves coming off of Africa, and some of the dust can even make it all the way across the Atlantic to decrease visibility in Southeastern cities. You can read more about a recent study on the effects of dust on climate variability and change in Physics Today at https://phys.org/news/2022-04-effects-drought-climate.html.
