In Psychedelic Colors, This NASA Visualization Reveals the Global Impact of Smoke From Wildfires

Helping us to see beautiful — but also unsettling — patterns of tiny aerosols, the visualization shows swirling, pulsing patterns of desert dust, pollution particles and even sea salt blowing through the atmosphere.

ImaGeo iconImaGeo
By Tom Yulsman
Feb 5, 2020 12:00 AMFeb 5, 2020 4:56 PM
Visualizing Transport off Wildfire Smoke Around the World
Screenshot from an animation showing the movement of aerosols in the atmosphere between August 2019 and January 2020. (Source: NASA)

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What happens on the land and the sea doesn't always stay on the land and the sea. Far from it, in fact.

Blown by the wind, pulses of Saharan dust surge out over the Atlantic. Plumes of noxious smoke from raging Australian and Siberian wildfires manage to girdle the entire globe. And, perhaps most interestingly, clouds of sea salt sucked up into hurricanes and typhoons spiral across ocean basins within the cyclonic structure of these storms.

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