Poetic NASA Visualization presentations How everything is attached

in the world, there could not be a bigger distinction between the Amazon rainforest and the African Sahara. The latter is a brown streak of wilderness; the previous, green and teeming with lifestyles. Polar opposites though they could also be, the Amazon and the Sahara have a symbiotic relationship: the vitamins of wilderness mud blow across the Atlantic and feed the rainforest. This process is in most cases invisible to the eye, but NASA has visualized it in three-dimensions in a phenomenal video.

to show how clouds of dust blow throughout the Atlantic, scientists at the Godard Flight middle tracked mud from the Bodélé despair in Chad, an historic lake bed containing rock minerals composed of lifeless microorganisms. and people dead microorganisms? they may be loaded with phosphorous, an essential nutrient for plant growth; the luxurious Amazon rainforest can not get enough of it. Phosphorous is way rarer in the soils of the Amazon than in the barren region, but as a result of winds dump roughly 22,000 tons of phosphorous-wealthy mud on the Amazon yearly, the rainforest’s supply is constantly replenished.

The dust visualization was derived from data collected from 2007 thru 2013 through NASA’s Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder satellite tv for pc statement satellite, or CALYPSO. CALYPSO sent out constant pulses of sunshine that refracted off mud particles within the atmosphere, then back to the satellite tv for pc. Twenty-two thousand lots of mud would possibly sound huge, but it’s a drop in the bucket when compared with how a lot mud the winds of the Sahara in truth in truth decide up: a typical of 182 million tons, which is the an identical of virtually 690,000 semi-vans filled with dust.

in case you needed every other reminder of how small the arena is, here you go. the whole thing is attached. learn more about NASA’s work monitoring atmospheric mud right here.

[by way of Notcot]