Day 119 - 6th Day to Senegal

It has been well documented that Spanish galleons, en route to the New World, voyaged first to the Canary Islands in order to harness the northeasterly trade for the trans-Atlantic crossing. These winds still blow today.
And in the 21st century, scientists are observing that they not only give sailing vessels a boost; they also carry millions of tons of Sahara sands across the ocean.
The Sahara Desert spans some three million square miles, almost the size of the continental US. Each year, 182 million tons of it is lifted from the desert dunes and transported in a west-southwest direction some 3,000 miles. It is estimated that 27 million tons settles in the Amazon basin, the world's largest rainforest. This global cross-pollination of sorts adds phosphorus, nitrogen and iron to the jungle's soils— nutrients that are often lost to rain run-off and flooding.
NASA and the French space agency CNES track this migration of sand through CALIPSO, the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation orbiter. Since 2006, it has kept watch on the movement of the planet's particles, miniscule when taken alone but forming massive plumes when they take to the atmosphere. The Amazon is not the only ecosystem that benefits. In the Atlantic, the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, plankton feed on the fallen dust. Their growth provides food for other marine animals. It has also been
gested that atmospheric sands block sunlight, which cools the oceans and may weaken the strength of hurricanes.
The idea of using part of the Sahara desert for a solar farm to produce energy and lessen our dependency on fossil fuels is thought to have negative consequences to this ecological balance discussed. Pictures are from Senegal.En savoir plus