Iodine in desert dust destroys ozone: New study shows iodine from desert dust can decrease ozone air pollution but could prolong greenhouse gas lifetimes
When winds loft fine desert dust high into the atmosphere, iodine in that dust can trigger chemical reactions that destroy some air pollution, but also let greenhouse gases stick around longer. The finding, published today in the journal Science Advances, may force researchers to re-evaluate how particles from land can impact the chemistry of the […]
Vast patches of glassy rock in Chilean desert likely created by ancient exploding comet
Around 12,000 years ago, something scorched a vast swath of the Atacama Desert in Chile with heat so intense that it turned the sandy soil into widespread slabs of silicate glass. Now, a research team studying the distribution and composition of those glasses has come to a conclusion about what caused the inferno. In a […]