NASA Satellites Track Asia-Atlantic Smog Train

Environment News Service, May, 2004 by staff

GREENBELT, Maryland (ENS) — Scientists with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) have found that ground level air pollution created in one region of the world can be swept up by air currents and travel halfway around the globe. The pollution appears to catch an airborne wind current from Asia to the southern Atlantic Ocean.

From January to April, as much as half of the ozone pollution above the Atlantic Ocean may be speeding down a "train track" of air from the Indian Ocean. As it rolls along, it picks up more smog from thunderstorms that bring it up from the Earth's surface.

Bob Chatfield, a scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California said, "Man-made pollution from Asia can flow southward, get caught up into clouds, and...

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