NASA’s EMIT mission has created the first comprehensive maps of the world’s mineral dust-source regions, providing precise locations of 10 key minerals based on how they reflect and absorb light. When winds loft these substances into the air, they either cool or warm the atmosphere and Earth’s surface, depending on their composition. Understanding their abundance around the globe will help researchers predict future climate impacts.
NASA’s EMIT produced its first global maps of hematite, goethite, and kaolinite in Earth’s dry regions using data from the year ending November 2023. The mission collected billions of measurements of the three minerals and seven others that may affect climate when lofted into the air as dust storms. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Launched to the International Space Station in 2022, EMIT – short for Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation – is an imaging spectrometer developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The mission fills a crucial need among climate scientists for more detailed information on surface mineral composition.
Surveying Earth’s surface from about 250 miles (410 kilometers) above, EMIT scans broad areas that would be impossible for a geologist on the ground or instruments carried by aircraft to survey, yet it does this while achieving effectively the same level of detail.
EMIT, a NASA mission launched to the International Space Station in 2022, mapped hematite, goethite, and kaolinite in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. The three minerals are among 10 key substances the mission studied that are thought to influence climate change. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
To date, the mission has captured more than 55,000 “scenes” – 50-by-50-mile (80-by-80-kilometer) images of the surface – in its study area, which includes arid regions within a 6,900-mile-wide (11,000-kilometer-wide) belt around Earth’s mid-section. Taken together, the scenes comprise billions of measurements – more than enough to create detailed maps of surface composition.