Michael

The island is Cyprus. The phenomena of desertification you describe are
mainly in the S and SW Sahara. Our sandstorms come from NE Sahara (N.
Egypt and Libya). I believe that the increased frequency is probably due
to the cyclonic wind pattern increasing. The average barometric pressure
lows in the Eastern Med seem to have dropped a couple of millibars and
the anticyclonic highs have increased slightly, as well, over the past
40 or 50 years. I think that this may also be symptomatic of climate
change, although I cannot be categorical.

Believe it or not, but the hurricanes which hit the Caribbean and
Florida/Georgia/Carolinas have their origin in a Saharan sandstorm.
Transoceanic dust transport is a common phenomena. I have seen glacial
ice cores in Switzerland with strata visible from dust transport from
many sources, some from thousands of km away. In fact, depth dating is
done from the presence of volcanic dust, such as Krakatoa, Mt. St.
Helens, La Soufrière and, more recently, Montserrat and Pinatubo. I
believe that the 79 CE eruption of Vesuvius is also an important one,
although I haven't seen an ice core that deep.

When I was a student in Edinburgh, probably 49 or 50, I remember the sun
and moon both turning bright blue one day. This was ascribed to a dust
aerosol resulting from major forest fires in Canada.

I'm not, by any means, a marine biologist, so I cannot really help re
seaweed decomposition. I should imagine that there are three different
mechanisms for wrack, tidal algae and totally submerged algae, the
latter being largely anaerobic and methanogenic.

Brian

[log in to unmask] wrote:
>
> According to NASA data and satellite photos from the last 40 years the
> Sahara
> was severely over grazed by cattle. Try to convince people who
> translate herd
> size into wealth that they are causing global events by how many cows
> they
> have! I don't know what island you are on but pictures from space
> years ago
> clearly showed replacement of green land into desert sand. In turn the
> winds
> can be seen picking up the sand and moving it as far as the west coast
> of
> south america. Staggering yet plausible.
> Also, what information can you share on the decay of seaweed from the
> oceans?

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8d
To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in
the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet
To temporarily halt delivery of Technet send the following message: SET Technet NOMAIL
Search previous postings at: www.ipc.org > On-Line Resources & Databases > E-mail Archives
Please visit IPC web site (http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm) for additional
information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------