NOTE MINERALOGY AND ORIG IN OF DUST FALL ON SKYE

• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Sutherland; North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.605.7773; http://www.minersoc.org/pages/Archive-CM/Volume_12/12-4-353.pdf

On 6 March 1977 considerable popular interest was aroused by a mysterious cloud of fine dust which fell as 'red rain ' on some areas of North Scotland covering cars and houses in Skye, Sutherland and a stretch of the West Coast from Ayr northwards. On 1 July 1968 an apparently similar dust, which had originated in Morocco (Stevenson, 1969), fell over a large part of England and Wales and there have been several other reports of dust falls of material transported over large distances. North-east rade winds over the North Atlantic Ocean seem to contain the greatest concentrations of dust (Chester & Johnson, 1971) and although equatorial African soils can contribute to this material (Aston et aL, 1973), it has often originated in the Sahara Desert and has been carried as far as Florida (Junge, 1956), Barbados and Bermuda (Delany et al., 1967; Bricker & Prospero, 1969). Land-derived material in some deep-sea sediments receive a significant FIG. l(a). Electron micrograph showing palygorskite fibres and other platy clay minerals. The bar represents 1/tm.