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ON MAY 26th 2008 Germany turned red. The winds of change, though, were meteorological, not political. Unusual weather brought iron-rich dust from Africa to Europe, not only altering the colour of roofs and cars on the continent but also, according to recent calculations by Max Bangert, a graduate student at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, making the place about a quarter of a degree colder for as long as the dust stayed in the air.
Unusual for Germany commonplace for the planet as a whole. The Sahara and other bone-dry places continually send dust up into the atmosphere, where it may travel thousands of kilometres and influence regional weather, the global climate and even the growth of forests halfway around the planet.
Earlier in 2008, for instance, Ilan Koren and his colleagues at the Weizmann Institute of Science, in Israel, detected a particularly voluminous burst of dust from the Bodélé Depression. This low-lying bed of silt in Chad, across which powerful jets of wind are wont to blow, constitutes less than 1% of the Sahara’s area but is reckoned the world’s dustiest place. It is thought to be responsible for a quarter or more of the Sahara’s output of airborne dust.
Dr Koren observed the dust rise with a camera on a satellite called Aqua watched it obscure the sun using an automated photometer in Ilorin, Nigeria followed it across the Atlantic with another satellite, CALIPSO and finally saw a spike in levels of silicon, aluminium and iron as it landed on detectors in Manaus, Brazil. His results, presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union held in San Francisco in December, provide a remarkable account of the intercontinental transfer of dust.

A. 어휘
A fistful of 한 줌의 먼지. appreciate 眞價(진가)를 인정하다, 평가하다.
meteorological 氣象學(기상학)적인. dust 흙먼지.
alter 변경시키다. graduate student 대학원생. Institute 대학, 연구소, 학회.
commonplace 흔해빠진, 陳腐(진부)한. colleagues 동료.
detect 탐지하다. particularly 특별히. voluminous 많은, 방대한, 부피가 큰.
burst 폭발, 파열. Depression 低地(저지), 지반의 沈下(침하).
Bodélé Depression 사하라 사막 Chad에 있는 저지대.
silt 沈泥(침니), 沈積土(침적토). wont 늘...하는.
constitute 구성하다. reckon 看做(간주)하다, 평가하다, 계산하다.
airborne 공중에 떠있는, 空輸(공수)의. obscure 가리다, 어둡게 하다.
automated photometer 자동 光度計(광도계). 대못, spike 보리 따위의 이삭.
Geophysical 지구물리학의. transfer 移轉(이전).