Nine Indonesian fisherman whose boat was destroyed by Cyclone Ilsa are still missing, among them a 26-year-old man whose mother is desperate for news of his whereabouts.
Kati Thanda-Lake Eyre (KT-LE) sits at the heart of Australia’s dust transport system. Satellite mapping demonstrates that the lower Channel Country/northern KT-LE represents a global dust hotspot–the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. This dust is transported widely, with two dominant plume pathways; southeast, across the Tasman Sea, South Pacific Ocean and Southern Ocean, and northwest over the Pilbara/Kimberly and Indian Ocean. Marine sedimentary records imply KT-LE has been emitting dust throughout the Quaternary and potentially longer, although dust deposits linked directly to KT-LE exist only for the past ~55 kyr. The southern section of KT-LE emits little dust today; however, palaeo-aeolian sediments outcrop in, and mantle, the southern lake margins, pointing to the possibility of major net dust deflation episodes over the last glacial cycle. The spatial extent of net-deflation episodes remains uncertain. Only one event, at 30–15 ka, is evident in both lake sedimentary rec