| Submit your comments on this article |
| Iraq-Jordan |
| Iraq sulphur fire breaks records |
| 2004-10-28 |
| A fire at an Iraq chemical plant has caused the largest recorded man-made release of sulphur dioxide, experts say. The fire, which broke out on 24 June 2003, produced more of the polluting gas than most volcanic eruptions. On average it generated about 21,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide a day, which is half the daily emissions of the gas produced by the United States. The plume of smog was detected by a Nasa satellite, the researchers say in Geophysical Research Letters. The fire, which was probably started deliberately, broke out at the Al-Mishraq state sulphured plant near Mosul. It burned for almost a month. Scientists monitored the blaze using satellite images. They calculated that a total of around 600,000 tonnes of sulphur dioxide was released by the fire. To put that figure in context, the giant eruption of the American volcano Mount Saint Helens in 1980, belched out about one million tonnes of sulphur dioxide. Although the team, from the University of Maryland in Baltimore, believe the fire will not have a long-lasting environmental impact, they say the fire caused about $40 million of damage to local crops - along with respiratory problems in local people. The scientists used two instruments to collect the data - the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer - which are located on Nasa's Earth monitoring satellites, Terra and Aqua. |
| Posted by:Mark Espinola |
| #1 If the amount of SO2 (sulfur dioxide) is in the same ballpark as the Mount Saint Helens eruption then it will be cold day for the global warming crowd. This large of a quantity of SO2 will probably cause a measurable decrease in global temperatures for a couple of years. |
| Posted by: Chemist 2004-10-28 4:51:38 PM |