title: Sources of cosmic dust in the Earth's atmosphere.
abstract: There are four known sources of dust in the inner solar system: Jupiter Family comets, asteroids, Halley Type comets, and Oort Cloud comets. Here we combine the mass, velocity, and radiant distributions of these cosmic dust populations from an astronomical model with a chemical ablation model to estimate the injection rates of Na and Fe into the Earth's upper atmosphere, as well as the flux of cosmic spherules to the surface. Comparing these parameters to lidar observations of the vertical Na and Fe fluxes above 87.5 km, and the measured cosmic spherule accretion rate at South Pole, shows that Jupiter Family Comets contribute (80 ± 17)% of the total input mass (43 ± 14 t d-1), in good accord with Cosmic Background Explorer and Planck observations of the zodiacal cloud.
authors.affiliation: School of Chemistry University of Leeds Leeds UK.
authors.forename: J D
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0520-5414
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Carrillo-Sánchez
authors.affiliation: Department of Space Studies Southwest Research Institute Boulder Colorado USA.
authors.forename: D
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-4547-4301
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Nesvorný
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics Catholic University of America Washington District of Columbia USA; Space Weather Laboratory Greenbelt Maryland USA.
authors.forename: P
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5667-9337
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Pokorný
authors.affiliation: Space Weather Laboratory Greenbelt Maryland USA.
authors.forename: D
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-8615-5166
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Janches
authors.affiliation: School of Chemistry University of Leeds Leeds UK.
authors.forename: J M C
authors.identifier: 0000-0003-3648-6893
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Plane
keywords: asteroids; comets; cosmic dust; cosmic spherules; mesospheric metal layers; meteoric ablation