Vapours and Effluvia

[Mike Roger]

Hi folks,

 

The New Scientist for 8 Feb tells us that the intense marine seashore smell in foggy conditions includes dimethyl sulphide and related compounds (from seaweed and plankton),  and their products of reactions with oxygen. In windless foggy conditions they are not dispersed and react further to become intensely aromatic.

 

Friends on the Brazilian coast were excited to tell me of Maresia, a corrosive substance which arrives in droplets and deposits everywhere, making for additional housecleaning and maintenance chores and expense.

 

Chloride ion attack, in splash and spray zones, is something we are more familiar with.

 

In anti-cyclonic weather, smog from European exhaust fumes, that dense purplish haze on the horizon, is what we breathe.

 

In March 08 I visited the Danum Valley Field Centre in Sabah and met a group of RS scientists who were investigating gaseous compounds arising from the forest. This to improve knowledge of climate affecting agents.

 

Does anyone think researching/compiling data for agents affecting our climate from sources outside our shoreline is useful, timely, desirable?

 

Mike Roger