干旱区生态环境知识资源中心

Since summer 2001, dust pollution of the air is regularly measured through a particle counter at the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (TNG) located at the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory (La Palma - Canary Islands). Canary Islands are normally interested by a dominant atmospheric circulation with NE winds. Depending on their strenght, and their exact direction, winds may bring with themselves small to large amount of dust from the Sahara desert, with important consequences on the transparency of the sky. Meteorological satellites gave us some impressive examples of such these phenomenon. We show here the results of trying a correlation between dust-pollution data and the nightly atmospheric extinction measured at other telescopes. While the transparency is mostly affecting the astronomical work, other effects like changes of air temperature and humidity are clearly visible; for this reason dust-pollution data are also compared with the weather data recorded at the TNG meteo tower.