The Intercontinental Smog Express
I told you recently about the awful reality of the
North Pacific Gyre, an informal oceanic garbage dump which is caused by
casual dumping of solid waste at sea and along the world’s shorelines and formed
by planetary wind patterns and water currents. Larger in area than the
continental United States, the North Pacific Gyre is as large a stain on the
face of the Earth as the unspeakable loss of tropical rain forests on most every
continent.
Sadly, it turns out that there is something of an atmospheric cousin to the
North Pacific Gyre, known affectionately among climatologists and meteorologists
as the Chemical Equator. Confined to a range of latitudinal boundaries, the
Chemical Equator is a vast pocket of dirty air which shifts throughout the year
with monsoon winds but remains confined to the Intertropical Convergence Zone –
a belt of low-pressure air which circles the Earth near the equator.
Driven by Hadley cells, the same results of solar radiation on the atmosphere as
give us jet streams, trade winds and subtropical deserts, these cells occupy the
intersection of the oceanic and atmospheric patterns of each hemisphere.
Strangely enough, this chemical equator generally is dirtier in the north
because the land mass north of the Equator contains millions more people than
the south and thus millions of additional sources of air pollution.
What strikes me the most is that smoggy metropolitan and industrial areas have
an effect so vast that it can be measured on a global scale. Now, thanks to the
fine work of the Natural Environment Research Council in the United Kingdom and
Clean Up The World in Australia, it is possible for each of us to see with
amazing accuracy just where the results of the air pollution which we create
will be trapped in the sky and rotated as the planet spins on its axis.
That’s right, through the power of Google Earth, we can see where the dirty air
which we caused is located. Give it a try. You may find the results quite
compelling. I know I did. Just visit the interactive map at
activities.cleanuptheworld.org
Fomenting the Triple Bottom Line
Corbett Kroehler
Photocredit: sealevel.jpl.nasa.gov
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