Welcome to NCAR's live online chat with scientists tracking dust and pollution from Asia to North America.

Schedule:

May 14: Testing this site

May 15: Live chat from 4:00 to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (1:00 to 2:00 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time)

Scientists taking questions:

• Jeff Stith (NCAR), taking observations aboard the NSF/NCAR Gulfstream-V jet
• V. "Ram" Ramanathan (Scripps), monitoring data from NCAR's Research Aviation Facility at Jefferson County Airport, Broomfield, Colorado

About this chat page

• page refreshes periodically; some browsers will display a countdown timer in lower-left corner
• while chat is interactive, this viewer posts in near-real time, with approximately a two-minute delay earlier messages appear first
• if no chat has yet occurred on this channel for the day, the log will be blank until a conversation begins
• time-stamps are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), based on a 24-hour clock, with 12:00 UTC equal to 8:00 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Convert UT codes to U.S. time zones with this conversion chart from the U.S. Naval Observatory.

About PACDEX

PACDEX examines the environmental impacts of massive plumes of dust and pollutants that blow from Asia to North America. The plumes may influence global climate change, and they also can alter regional precipitation patterns and the amount of sunlight that reaches Earth. Scientists are using the nation's newest and most capable aircraft for environmental research, the National Science Foundation/NCAR Gulfstream-V, to fly through the plumes. (more about PACDEX)