Climate research in
Click here to expand. The Bodele research team is obscured by dust.
JB: This is Earth & Sky. In 2005, a team of seven scientists from the U.K. braved dust storms and extreme heat to collect data samples from the Bodele depression in the African country of Chad.
DB: They were the first climate scientists to visit and study the Bodele, a dry lake bed that’s sometimes called “the dustiest place on Earth.”
JB: Satellites can determine the size and track of a dust plume. These scientists traveled to the Bodele to release helium balloons to study wind speeds and collect dust samples in plastic bottles.
DB: Team member Charlie Bristow of the University of London said these measurements combined with satellite data provide a much better picture of how the Bodele dust affects Earth’s global climate. But, as Bristow told Earth & Sky, collecting data in the world’s dustiest place is no easy task.
Charlie Bristow: It’s very very harsh, particularly when the dust starts blowing because it gets into everything. It gets in your eyes; it gets in your ears; it gets in your nose; it gets in your mouth; it gets in your food; it gets in your water. Everything is just completely covered in dust and every time you take a mouth full of food it’s going to crunch in your mouth. It’s a very nasty place to work.
JB: So are the scientists grateful that their work in the Bodele is done?
Charlie Bristow: We’re actually trying to raise money to go back again, so we’re suckers for punishment.
Our thanks today to NASA explore, discover, understand.
See more images of the Bodele NASA.
Our thanks to:
Dr. Charlie Bristow
Senior Lecturer
School of Earth Sciences
Birkbeck College
University of London
Additional Teacher Resources
NASA Earth Observatory: Bodele Depression Dust Feeds Amazon
Though wind-scoured and virtually barren, the southern Sahara Desert turns out to be a surprising sustainer of life an ocean away-in South America’s Amazon Rainforest. By studying NASA satellite data of the spread of dust across the globe, scientists discovered that more than half of the mineral dust that fertilizes the Amazon soil comes from a single spot in the southern Sahara, a large mountain-rimmed valley called the Bodele Depression.
NASA: Observing Earths Systems from Space
Astronaut observations have opened whole new avenues of research into previously-undocumented connections among disparate elements of the Earth System. For example, the connection between desertification in the Sahel of North Africa and the decline of coral reefs in the Caribbean was not documented until astronauts observed and photographed large dust clouds in the atmosphere over the Caribbean Sea. According to Dr. Tony Phillips of th NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.
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