Scientists say they have found the cleanest air on Earth

By AFP
June 05, 2020

NEW YORK: Scientists believe they have identified the world’s cleanest air, free from particles caused by human activity, located over the Southern Ocean, which surrounds, foreign media reported.

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In a first-of-its-kind study of the bioaerosol composition of the Southern Ocean, researchers from Colorado State University identified an atmospheric region which remains unchanged by human activity.

Weather and climate are closely linked, connecting each part of the world with other regions. As the climate changes rapidly because of human activity, scientists and researchers struggle to find a corner of the Earth unaffected by people.

However, professor Sonia Kreidenweis and her team suspected that the air over the Southern Ocean would be least affected by humans and dust from the world’s continents. Researchers found that the boundary layer air, which feeds the lower clouds over the Southern Ocean, was free from aerosol particles produced by human activity — including burning fossil fuels, planting certain crops, fertilizer production, and wastewater disposal — or transported from other countries around the world.Air pollution is caused by aerosols, which are solid and liquid particles and gases that are suspended in the air.

Researchers decided to study what was in the air, and where it came from, using bacteria in the air as a diagnostic tool to infer the properties of the lower atmosphere.

Research scientist and co-author of the study Thomas Hill explained that “the aerosols controlling the properties of SO (Southern Ocean) clouds are strongly linked to ocean biological processes, and that Antarctica appears to be isolated from southward dispersal of microorganisms and nutrient deposition from southern continents,” he said in a statement.

“Overall, it suggests that the SO is one of very few places on Earth that has been minimally affected by anthropogenic activities,” he added.

Scientists sampled the air in the marine boundary level — the part of the atmosphere that has direct contact with the ocean — while aboard a research boat traveling south to the Antarctic ice edge from Tasmania, Australia.

Scientists then examined the composition of airborne microbes, which are found in the atmosphere and often dispersed thousands of kilometers by the wind.Using DNA sequencing, source tracking and wind back trajectories scientist and first author Jun Uetake found that the microbes’ origins were from the ocean.

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