The desert Southwest isn’t the only source of dust in the atmosphere over Colorado. As much as 64 million tons of dust from minerals, soils, pollutants and other sources cross the ocean from Asia, carried by prevailing west winds, and mix into over North America each year, according to a NASA study published last spring. That’s just about about equal to the 69 million tons of aerosols produced domestically by natural processes, transportation, and industrial sources. The tiny particles can affect the climate, as well human health if they mix down into the lower atmosphere. Dust movement is particularly active in spring, when the rise of cyclones and strong mid-latitude westerlies boost particle transport across the Pacific. In addition to the transport from Asia, North America also imports aerosols from Africa and the Middle East. “This is a crucial step toward better understanding how these tiny but abundant materials move around the planet and impact climate change and air quality,” said Hongbin Yu, lead author and an atmospheric scientist at the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Observing aerosols and quantifying their impact on warming or cooling the planet remains one of the most difficult challenges in climate science. Dust has been identified as a significant factor in Colorado hydrological cycles. In years with significant dust deposition, snow melts earlier. But so far, the imported dust
doesn’t seem to part of that problem. According to Chris Landry, director of the Silverton-based Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies, most of the dust-on-snow particles that affect Colorado are too large to have made the trans-Pacific journey. Until new research shows otherwise, it’s still reasonable to attribute the primary effects on snow albedo to Colorado Plateau source area dust.

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