DUST OR AEROSOL LAYERS FROM DISTANT SOURCES

In the past few decades our research has uncovered the surprising fact that pollution or blowing dust from deserts can, in certain cases, travel much further than had been imagined. Indeed, pollution from sources in Eurasia travel to and build up all across the northern polar regions (Arctic Haze). Dust from the Gobi Desert and sulfate pollution from China travels across the Pacific Ocean. Here is a band of Arctic Haze seen in the vicinity of Barrow, Alaska:

And here is dust from the Gobi desert, as viewed edge-on from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii: