Dust research receives NWO Open Competition – XS grant

Jan- Berend Stuut explains his ideas on further research on this topic. "Each year, hundreds of millions tons desert dust are blown across the atmosphere and deposited into the ocean. Plankton living in the ocean profits from the nutrients in this dust and reduces atmospheric CO2 contents through photosynthesis. Recently it was discovered how dust deposition by rain plays a key role in this process but so far, we have no clue how much dust is actually coming down with rain. In this project we propose to construct and deploy autonomous wet-dust collectors at sea to quantify the amounts wet-dust deposition on the ocean and study its potential to mitigate climate change".