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Dust Dimming the Sun

◆ Due to the drought in large parts of Africa, vast dust clouds have been whirled into the skies and blown across the Atlantic Ocean to the Caribbean lands. Scientists in the Caribbean have monitored dust from Africa for years, noting relatively little change in concentrations. But now the dust has increased. Said Science News of January 19, 1974: “In a single year, from 1972 to 1973, the summer African dust count measured at Barbados jumped 60 percent, reaching three times its 1968 pre-drought level . . . the dust has now reached such concentrations that it is dimming the very sun, with possible implications not only for air quality, but for the weather itself.” The dust from Africa “has blocked out as much as 15 percent of the solar energy reaching the surface of the tropical Atlantic.”