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To: elmatador who wrote (31878)	4/19/2003 12:42:59 AM
From: EL KABONG!!!	Respond to of 74559

Hi elmatador, Not many people know it, but those very same dust particles are absolutely critical to the formation of clouds and rain over the Atlantic. Clouds, and eventually rain, are nothing more than moisture condensing, which forms clouds. Get enough condensation, and it rains, a very simple process to understand. What most folks don't know though, is how moisture condenses, which is also simple when one thinks about it. Imagine a rather humid atmosphere wherever you may now be. Where does condensation form? On the grass or foliage? That's called dew. On the windshield of your car? That's called condensation, but it's exactly the same process as dew. Something exposed to the humid atmosphere becomes colder than the air surrounding it, and the moisture condenses out of the air onto the colder item. And that's the exact same process that forms clouds and rain. Each tiny "piece" of the mist (actually a tiny water droplet) contains at its center a fine particle of dust. Many tiny droplets viewed in aggregate form clouds. And many of these tiny droplets accumulate together and fall back to earth as rain. If all that dust from Africa weren't in the air over the Atlantic, then there'd be next to nothing to be colder than the surrounding air, moisture couldn't condense and there'd be no clouds and no rain. So, the very fine dust particles do play a needed role in nature. Meteorology 101... KJC

To: elmatador who wrote (31878)	4/19/2003 12:50:56 AM
From: Moominoid	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74559

Dust moving long distances isn't news... loess soils and the terra rossa soils on limestone in Mediterranean regions are made of that. So this scientist wanted to show he could show that microbes come across on the dust. Of course, if so, that has been happening throughout the history of the world. The reporter then makes a sensational spin. Or perhaps it is the problem that to get money from the NSF etc. you have to show "relevance to society"....