Broken glass isn't some hysterical metaphor by zealots who hate business, a PNAS study found that microscopic particles of dust emitted into the atmosphere when dirt breaks apart follow similar fragment patterns as broken glass and other brittle objects.

Dust is important in the study of atmospheric cause and effect because it is not just a big issue, like climate change and the resulting global warming/cooling/variation (your choice, depending on whether or not you are buried in snow at the moment) but also in weather forecasting (so you would have known you were going to be buried in snow during the third warmest year recently).



The smallest particlesare classified as clay and are as tiny as 2 microns in diameter but they remain in the atmosphere for about a week, circling much of the globe and exerting a cooling influence by reflecting heat from the Sun back into space. Larger particles, classified as silt, fall out of the atmosphere after a few days. The larger the particle, the more it will tend to have a heating effect on the atmosphere.

The new research indicates that the ratio of silt particles to clay particles is two to eight times greater than represented in climate models.