Glacial flour might sound like some new-fangled well being meals, however you would not need to make bread out of it.
Final month, NASA’s Terra satellite tv for pc and the European House Company’s Sentinel-2 mission captured photos of glacial flour streaming over the panorama in Greenland. NASA describes the rare phenomenon as ‘fine-grained silt fashioned by glaciers grinding and pulverizing rock.’
Undoubtedly not for baking.
The view, captured on Sept. 29, provides scientists a great take a look at what occurs when wind pushes a silt plume out of a stream valley. NASA launched a sequence of photos displaying the stream’s floodplain drying out and turning grey over a matter of days. The scene is calm a day later.
‘That is by far the largest occasion detected and reported by satellites that I learn about,’ said Santiago Gassó, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard House Flight Heart.
Gassó says high-latitude mud occasions like this one can impression air high quality. A 2016 study suggests the dust can add vitamins to the marine setting.
NASA suspects the glacial flour got here from glaciers positioned upstream from the floodplain. These house observations might give scientists a greater understanding of how glacial flour and mud plumes work together with the ambiance, and will in the future contribute to up to date local weather fashions.
For the extra informal observer, the dramatic picture provides us a glimpse of how mud storms work in a spot we usually affiliate with ice, snow and chilly.