There's nothing like that fresh, rain-washed air after a storm, right?

没有什么比的上被暴风雨冲刷过后的空气更清新了，对吧？
The idea has always been the rain is cleaning.

人们一直有雨水可以洗刷清洁空气的观念。

Mary Gilles, a chemist at Lawrence Berkeley Lab.

来自劳伦斯伯克利实验室的化学家玛丽·吉尔斯说道。

She and her colleagues study microscopic airborne particles, so normally we don't collect during rain.

她和同事们研究的是微小的大气颗粒，因此通常我们不会在下雨时收集它们。

Because our intuition is, the air's clean, why would we be collecting right now?"

因为我们的直觉告诉我们，空气已经这么干净了，我们为什么还要马上收集呢?

Two years ago, they went against that intuition and collected after a rainstorm, at a field in northern Oklahoma.

但2年前研究人员将这样的想法彻底推翻，在暴风雨过后的俄克拉何马州北部田地里他们进行了大气微粒的收集。

And what they found was actually a wealth of particles—about half a micron in diameter, nearly spherical, and glassy-looking under the microscope.

结果他们发现空气中实际上包含大量直径约半微米，近乎球形，在显微镜下呈现光亮透明的微粒。

Lab analysis revealed the miniscule bits to be carbon-based blobs of soil material—like decayed bits of plants and soil-dwellers.
But how they got airborne was a mystery.

而实验分析表明这些微粒原本是以碳为基础的土壤物质，比如在腐烂的植物和其他土壤寄居物中就能发现。
The researchers think that what's happening, based on a follow-up experiment, goes something like this.

研究人员认为情况是基于以下他们进行的实验。
The rain leads to puddles.

下雨会导致地面形成水坑。

Organic matter leaches into those puddles, forming a film on top of the water.

有机物质渗入水坑后就会在水面上形成一层薄膜。

Then, as raindrops strike, they form tiny air bubbles.

随着持续降雨，它们就会形成极其微小的气泡。
These bubbles rise to the surface and burst through that layer of organic material, catapulting the soil particles into the air.

这些气泡浮到水面冲破最上面的一层有机材料后将土壤颗粒携带到大气中。
The study is in the journal Nature Geoscience.

这项研究已在《自然地球科学》杂志上发表。
Tiny as they may be, the particles may actually affect the climate.

尽管这些土壤的微粒极其细微，但也确实在影响着气候。
We think that they have the potential to actually be absorbing incoming solar radiation, and then that feeds back into global climate change.

我们认为这些物质会潜移默化地吸收太阳辐射，从而影响全球气候变化。
Meaning we might want to factor them into climate models.

这意味着我们也要把这些微粒纳入进影响气候模型的因素中。
Cause they appear to be more than just dust in the wind.

因为这些微粒看起来不仅仅是风中尘埃。

来源：时间去哪儿了博客（微信/QQ号：903918446），转载请保留出处和链接！

本文链接：http://timegowhere.com/post/110.html