The researchers have found a place with the cleanest air on Earth

News24xx.com -  The COVID-19 lockdown is definitely the worst thing to happen to humanity in a really long time, however, it has surely managed to have some positive effects too -- particularly with the way nature has healed itself without humans. 

However, no matter how fresh our air feels right now, it isn’t the cleanest yet because it still has pollutants in it.

However, now a group of researchers have actually found a place with the cleanest air on our planet. That place is situated in a region in the Southern Ocean off the coast of Antarctica. 

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This was discovered by a team of climate scientists from Colorado State University, (study published in Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences) led by Professor Sonia Kreidenweis.

Sonia and her team were curious to find out the extent of human pollution’s journey across our planet. They sailed into the Southern Ocean that surrounds Antarctica at around 40 degrees south latitude and analysed the composition of air from a variety of points. 

They checked for air quality from the boundary layer -- a section of the lower atmosphere that comes into contact with the surface of the ocean, going as high as 2 kilometres into the atmosphere. 

The collected samples revealed that the air had no aerosols or other particles connected to human activity or pollution.

With the help of DNA sequencing, source tracking and wind back trajectories, researchers found that the microbes' origins were marine, sourced from the ocean. 

The bacterial composition also was segregated into broad latitudinal zones, that suggested that aerosols from distant landmasses and human activities, such as pollution were not travelling south into Antarctic air.