Dust clouds generated by a huge dust storm in China's Taklimakan desert in 2007 made more than one full circle around the globe in just 13 days, a Japanese study using a NASA satellite has found.
When the cloud reached the Pacific Ocean the second time, it descended and deposited some of its dust into the sea, showing how a natural phenomenon can impact the environment far away.
"Asian dust is usually deposited near the Yellow Sea, around the Japan area, while Sahara dust ends up around the Atlantic Ocean and coast of Africa," said Itsushi Uno of Kyushu University's Research Institute for Applied Mechanics.
"But this study shows that China dust can be deposited into the (Pacific Ocean)," he told Reuters by telephone. "Dust clouds contain 5 percent iron, that is important for the ocean."
In a paper published in Nature Geoscience, scientists described how they used a NASA satellite and mathematical modeling to track and measure the movement of the dust cloud, which formed after the dust storm on May 8-9 in 2007.
The desert is in the Chinese northwestern region of Xinjiang.
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