Sources of cosmic dust in the Earth's atmosphere

There are four known sources of dust in the inner solar system: Jupiter Family comets, asteroids, Halley Type comets, and Oort Cloud comets. Here we combine the mass, velocity, and radiant distributions of these cosmic dust populations from an astronomical model with a chemical ablation model to est...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Geophysical Research Letters
Main Authors: Carrillo‐Sánchez, J. D., Nesvorný, D., Pokorný, P., Janches, D., Plane, J. M. C.
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2016
Subjects:
Research Letters
Jupiter
South Pole
South pole
Online Access:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5319002/
https://doi.org/10.1002/2016GL071697
Description
Summary:There are four known sources of dust in the inner solar system: Jupiter Family comets, asteroids, Halley Type comets, and Oort Cloud comets. Here we combine the mass, velocity, and radiant distributions of these cosmic dust populations from an astronomical model with a chemical ablation model to estimate the injection rates of Na and Fe into the Earth's upper atmosphere, as well as the flux of cosmic spherules to the surface. Comparing these parameters to lidar observations of the vertical Na and Fe fluxes above 87.5 km, and the measured cosmic spherule accretion rate at South Pole, shows that Jupiter Family Comets contribute (80 ± 17)% of the total input mass (43 ± 14 t d−1), in good accord with Cosmic Background Explorer and Planck observations of the zodiacal cloud.

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