Stunning discovery: Giant plumes of Sahara dust are fertilizing the Amazon

The report bases its findings on data from a NASA satellite launched back in 2006, which is able to pinpoint exactly how much phosphorous is leaving the Sahara and crossing the Atlantic to the Amazon basin.

The Sahara desert may seem like a barren place devoid of life, and it is, but it may bring life to other areas — specifically, the Amazon rainforest, according to a new study.

In findings published this week in the journal Geophysical Letters, scientists state that the Amazon rainforest may be partly fertilized by phosphorous that comes from a dry lake bed in the Sahara desert, according to a Los Angeles Times report.

NASA launched the Cloud Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation satellite (CALIPSO) back in 2006, which allowed researchers to examine the structure of clouds and airborne particles across the planet, and new data suggests that dust from the Sahara can cross the entire Atlantic Ocean all the way to South America and the Amazon rainforest, the research states.

In a different paper published in the journal Remote Sensing of the Environment, scientists found that 182 million tons of dust is carried outside the Sahara every year, and 28.8 million tons of dust find their way to the Amazon.

The paper published in Geophysical Letters provides a satellite-based estimate on how much phosphorous, which is essential for plant growth, is in that dust.

The Amazon is actually lacking in phosphorous, with 90 percent of the soil not having a sufficient amount due to rain and rivers washing away nutrients. The Sahara, on the other hand, has plenty of phosphorous, mostly from the Bodele Depression in Chad, an ancient lake bed.

An analysis of the satellite data found that 22,000 tons of phosphorous land in in the Amazon after leaving the Sahara, which is about the same as the amount of phosphorous that is washed away.

Still, there are major questions. The amount of dust that flies across the Atlantic changes greatly each year, with an 86 percent different between the largest plume recorded in 2007 and the smallest in 2011, according to the report.

The Bodele Depression is located at the southern edge of the Sahara Desert, and is the lowest point in Chad. Dust storms are frequent in the region, reportedly occurring about 100 days per year. They can result in huge dust storms that sweep over massive portions of West Africa.