I haven't seen any news of or comment on the following article by this
group; ergo, I thought some of you might be interested....
 
THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER
 
Sahara dust settles on Florida
Coral reefs victims of powerful force
 
Sun-Sentinel, South Florida
 
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. Soaring 184 miles above the earth astronauts who had
just set an endurance record for space shuttle travel were riveted by an odd
sight below.
 
A reddish-brown river of dust was erupting from the deserts and eroding
farmlands of North Africa.  And, as the space travelers aboard Columbia
could clearly see near the end of their July 1994 flight, it was headed for
Florida.  What they didn't know was that the dust might be helping kill
coral reefs.
 
A novel theory gaining increasing credence among researchers holds that this
periodically erupting river of dust, blown by the same winds that steer
hurricanes in this direction, is contributing to the decades-long decline of
corals across the Caribbean and in Florida.  And it may be causing other
environmental problems, too.
 
Up to a billion tons of this African dust have been blown across the
Atlantic in a single year.  The storms have intensified over the last three
decades as North Africa has grown increasingly arid--probably, some
scientists believe, because of a change in global climate.
 
"It's only going to get worse and worse," predicted Eugene Shinn, a
researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey.
 
Enough dirt is carried from the Old World to the New-from Maine to Texas to
the Caribbean Sea in the summer, covering much of northern South America in
the winter--that air plants in the Amazon have evolved to count on nutrients
derived from the airborne soil.
 
And recently, researchers have discovered that the dust storms may be
carrying with them pesticides long banned in this country, but still used in
Africa.
 
Mr. Shinn, who was studying the decline of reefs in the Florida Keys,
noticed that the years when the biggest dust plumes blew across the Atlantic
seemed to correspond to years when corals here--and sometimes across the
Caribbean--suffered.
 
The knowledge that large clouds of African dust were making their way across
the Atlantic to Florida and parts of the north goes back at least to the 1960s.
 
It's a summertime phenomenon, most common in July.
 
In the winter, weather patterns cause the dust to blow to South America instead.
 
Researchers wonder if these dust episodes are correlated with the long-term
weather phenomenon that governs how many hurricanes hit Florida and the rest
of the United States.
 
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