Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Dusty, Polluted Air Spawns Tornadoes

Deadly twisters routinely rip across the American Midwest each spring, and the Southeast each fall and winter. Just how they form is a mystery, but a new study suggests dust pollution in the atmosphere may nudge supercell thunderstorms into spawning tornadoes.

David Lerach of Colorado State University and a team of researchers compared two computer models of supercell storms -- one in which the atmosphere was clean, and one in which it was riddled with microscopic dust particles.

In the clean model the telltale rotating cloud formed, but no twister ever materialized. In the polluted version, which had 10 times more dust, it did.

Read full story Discovery News

Posted by Auto Accident Lawyers in Phoenix, Arizona