Dust storms and sandy dust events originating in arid and semi-arid areas can transport particulate material, pollutants, and potential transport long distances from their sources. Exposure to desert dust particles is generally acknowledged to endanger human health. However, most studies have examined anthropogenic particulate sources, with few studies considering contributions from natural des...

The Ulysses spacecraft has been orbiting the Sun on a highly inclined ellipse almost perpendicular to the ecliptic plane (inclination 79◦, perihelion distance 1.3 AU, aphelion distance 5.4 AU) since it encountered Jupiter in 1992. The in-situ dust detector on board continuously measured interstellar dust grains with masses up to 10−13 kg, penetrating deep into the solar system. The flow directi...

Mineral dust aerosol (dust) is widely recognized as a fundamental component of the climate system and is closely coupled with glacial-interglacial climate oscillations of the Quaternary period. However, the direct impact of dust on the energy balance of the Earth system remains poorly quantified, mainly because of uncertainties in dust radiative properties, which vary greatly over space and tim...

Recent observations from the Spitzer Space Telescope enable us to study the mid-infrared dust excess of Asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Using mid-infrared spectra, together with photometric data from the SAGE programme, we establish a colour selection of carbon-rich AGB stars with intermediate and high mass-loss rates. We also established mass-loss rate ...

The Thermal Emission Spectrometer aboard the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft has produced an extensive atmospheric data set, beginning during aerobraking and continuing throughout the extended scientific mapping phase. Temperature profiles for the atmosphere below about 40 km, surface temperatures and total dust and water ice opacities, can be retrieved from infrared spectra in nadir viewing mo...

In dc glow discharge dusty plasmas, the formation of dust acoustic waves is a commonly observed phenomenon. Experiments in the dusty plasma experiment device produce naturally occurring dust acoustic waves with frequencies f N 5 to 25 Hz and phase velocities of Vph N 0.5 to 10 cm/s. Through the use of particle image velocimetry techniques, particle motion in the vicinity of the wavefronts is id...

Formulation of the dust emission scheme in the global aerosol-climate modeling system ECHAM5-HAM has been improved. Modifications on the surface aerodynamic roughness length, soil moisture and East-Asian soil properties are included in the parameterization, which result in a large impact on the threshold wind friction velocity for aeolian erosion and thus influence the simulated dust emission a...

Study was carried out to assess the impact of cement dust on some selected plant species around industrial area. Deposition effect of cement dust on pigmentation was studied in Azadirachta indica, Pongamia pinnata, Delonix regia, Polyalthia longifolia and Ficus religiosa. Sampling was done about 500 meter distance difference from the cement industry and measurements were taken for all the plant...

The US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) modeling system version 4.7 is further developed to enhance its capability in simulating the photochemical cycles in the presence of dust particles. The new model treatments implemented in CMAQ v4.7 in this work include two online dust emission schemes (i.e., the Zender and Westphal schemes), nine dust-relate...

We analyse the attenuation properties of a sample of UV selected galaxies, with the use of the spectrophotometric model Grasil. In particular, we focus on the relation between dust attenuation and the reddening in the UV spectral region. We show that a realistic modelling of geometrical distribution of dust and of the different population of stars can explain the UV reddening of normal spiral g...