Air pollution may have a cooling effect on climate
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James Hansen, a known climate scientist known to warn global warming in the 1980s, warns that we are underestimating the effect of the decline of air pollution.
“Humanity made a bad deal, Faustian negotiation, when we used aerosols to compensate almost half of the greenhouse gas,” Hansen said directions Organized by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Networks.
But other researchers say this conclusion is based on embarrassing foundations, and we still do not know how much reduced air pollution reductions in global warming. Hansen’s consequences “around the upper end of what we thought they are plausibly,” he says, he says Michael Diamond At the State University of Florida, he did not participate in research.
Record the vertices in the global Average temperatures in 2023 and 2024 possess Spurred Discussion Whether the rhythm of global warming is accelerating faster than expected. The level of greenhouse gases and a peaceful ocean promoted most of the temperature rise, but other unknown assistants exacerbated than the average temperatures that can be explained by these factors.
Hansen and his colleagues In advance He linked the quick heating rate by reducing air pollution. Now, they offer a new analysis, a decline in air pollution can explain temperatures at temperatures in the last two years. Aerosols of air pollution, both directly reflect the sunlight and interact with clouds They have also been involved As a heat factor.
Researchers are particularly focused on a 2020 regulations that reduce the amount of harmful sugar used to send fuels. The sudden decline in the air pollution with the oceans have been given to researchers with unintended experiment, to determine the climate effects of Aerosol in more accuracy.
Hansen and his colleagues studied busy corridors in the Peace Ocean To calculate this effect, measuring the change in solar radiation absorbed by the planet, the air pollution declined in these areas. From there, they appreciate increasing the full change of ships aerosols Earth energy imbalance 0.5 watt per square meter. This is approximately the equivalent of the heating effect of a decade of global carbon dioxide emissions in today’s levels.
Additional warming would be enough to consider a part of the heat seen in the last two years. However, the implications are wider: the cooling effect of air pollution means that the full size of greenhouse effect, which has so far has not expressed the full impact of our emissions.
Hansen and his colleagues warn that this means that it is much more sensitive than climate greenhouse gas levels. As a result, they argue, the world approaches climate tip points, such as slowing down the key Currents of the Atlantic Ocean and The collapse of western Antarctic ice. To deal with this, they think we should seriously take the planet with intervention like how it cools Solar geocraticization.
However, there is 0.5 watts per square meter at the heart of the new analysis much more than other estimates Shipping emission change heat effect, says Tianle Yuan Maryland at the Baltimore County University. But he does not fully implausive.
Gavin Schmidt Nasan said the number is “very excessive” because it assumes all the change in sunlight, due to the change of ships aerosols, other small changes than other changes from China or natural variability.
Aerosol change may not even require 2023 Spike, says Shiv priyam in Raghura URBANA-CHAMPAIGN – Previously found before Illinois University Changes in Pacific Ocean Temperatures only. It requires more work to reconcile different estimates of air heating effects.
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