Editors’ Highlights are summaries of recent papers by AGU’s journal editors.
Source: Geophysical Research Letters
New research reveals the source of the red dust that blanketed the New Zealand Southern Alps in the summer of 2019-2020 following the severe Australian bushfires. While much attention was paid to ash from the extreme 2019-2020 Australian fires, a surprising discovery is that transport of dust generated from dust storms was also a major contributor to the composition of the atmosphere at the time.
Winton et al. [2024] analyze snow samples from the Fox, Franz Josef, and Tasman glaciers and geochemically fingerprint its origin as southeast Australia where desert dust storms transported massive amounts of red dust across the Tasman Sea. These dust storms were fueled by the same high winds that also drove the bushfires and transported an estimated 4,500 tons of red mineral dust to the snow and ice in the Southern Alps. While the dust storm event lasted only a short time, it could have long-term effects on glacier melting.
Citation: Winton, V. H. L., Charlier, B. L. A., Jolly, B. H., Purdie, H., Anderson, B., Hunt, J. E., et al. (2024). New Zealand Southern Alps blanketed by red Australian dust during 2019/2020 severe bushfire and dust event. Geophysical Research Letters, 51, e2024GL112782. https://doi.org/10.1029/2024GL112782
—Bin Zhao, Associate Editor, Geophysical Research Letters
Text © 2024. The authors. CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
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