Outwashplain

Paleoclimatology Appreciation Thread

Hey folks, so one of my "oh my goodness, could you stop talking about it, nobody cares you weirdo" things is paleoclimatology. I've been translating and producing summaries of different articles in a couple of languages as a hobby-that-might-benefit-other-people-one-day, but I'm thinking here I'll just take some of those articles and make very compact (twitteresque) summaries in simple English, and folks can discuss or not! (And maybe occasionally post a video of my freaking out about some weird thing I learned/am wilding over.) Also happy for others to contribute things they come across or have within them, from whatever angle.

Tweet-sized summaries of

AEROSOL (MINERAL) - Ina Tegen
from the Encyclopedia of Paleoclimatology and Ancient Environments

1. GENERAL

Mineral aerosol is a fancy term for tiny dust that gets blown about the planet. We track dust using satellites, and it shows up in ice cores, marine sediment, and other locations. Our measurements for dust are imprecise, but we do know that glacial periods tend to be 2-20 times dustier due to related conditions (e.g. drier climate, fewer plants).

2. DUST SOURCES

Dust comes from dry places, like deserts. Landscapes that offer less wind resistance (because they have fewer plants, big rocks, etc.) tend to be dustier. Dust accumulates in low areas in similar ways and for similar reasons to water. Dust can be depleted by aggressive winds or the "crusting" of soil; if dry "crusted" soil is disturbed, dust can reemerge.

3. DUST CYCLE

Dust can enter the upper atmosphere; large particles tend to only be airborne for a few hours and return to the ground due to gravity; submicron particles (i.e. itty-friggin-bitty dust) can remain in the atmosphere for over two weeks, traveling between continents, and returns to the surface in precipitation.

4. PROPERTIES

Small dust travels farther. Dust diversity reflects mineral diversity of the earth's surface; dust can be quartz, clay, or many other things. Some regions have identifiable dusts (e.g. iron-heavy "red sand" from the Sahara).

5. DUST EFFECTS ON CLIMATE

Different types of dust have an impact on the net absorption of solar and thermal radiation: some dust makes the planet hotter, some dust makes the planet colder. Dust can impact cloud formation, chemical reactions in the ozone and nitrogen cycles, and metabolic gas productions of species in environments where they are deposited. We do not have a definitive understanding of these processes.

Very cool thread, I look forward to reading more!

Great thread, reminds me of a guy on twitter who used to read a different physics arXiv paper every day and tweet out a little capsule summary.