The Discovery Channel has “shark week”. With all the Arctic news items on WUWT, this is beginning to feel like “polar week”. Here’s an article about aerosols having an impact on the arctic from a surprising source.- Anthony
From Universe Today, Nancy Atkinson
Since the 1890s, surface temperatures on Earth have risen faster in the Arctic than in other regions of the world. Usually, discussions on global warming tend to focus on greenhouse gases as the culprit for the trend. But new NASA research suggests about half the atmospheric warming measured in the Arctic is due to airborne particles called aerosols.
Aerosols are emitted by both natural and human sources. They can influence climate by reflecting or absorbing sunlight. The particles also affect climate by changing cloud properties, such as reflectivity. There is one type of aerosol that, according to the study, [reduces] rather than increases in its emissions seem to have promoted warming.
The research team, led by climate scientist Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies used a computer model to investigate how sensitive different regional climates are to changes in levels of carbon dioxide, ozone, and aerosols.
They found that Earth’s middle and high latitudes are particularly responsive to changes in aerosol levels. The model suggests aerosols likely account for 45 % or more of the warming measured in the Arctic since 1976.
Though there are several types of aerosols, previous research indicates two in particular, sulfates and black carbon, play leading roles in climate. Both are products of human activity. Sulfates, which come mainly from the burning of coal and oil, scatter sunlight and cool the air. Over the past three decades, the United States and European countries have passed clean-air laws that have halved sulfate emissions.
The models showed that regions of Earth that showed the strongest responses to aerosols in the model are the same regions that have witnessed the greatest actual temperature increases since 1976, specifically the Arctic. However in the Antarctic, aerosols play less of a role.
Researchers with the NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported in the April 3 issue of the journal Geophysical Research Letters that Arctic summers may be ice-free in as few as 30 years.
The Arctic region has seen its surface air temperatures rise by 1.5 C (2.7 F) since the mid-1970s. In the Antarctic, surface air temperature has increased about 0.35 C (0.6 F). That makes sense, Shindell said, because the Arctic is near North America and Europe, highly industrialized regions that produce most of the world’s aerosols.
“In the mid-latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere and in the Arctic, the impact of aerosols is just as strong as that of the greenhouse gases,” said Shindell. “We will have very little leverage over climate in the next couple of decades if we’re just looking at carbon dioxide. If we want to try to stop the Arctic summer sea ice from melting completely over the next few decades, we’re much better off looking at aerosols and ozone.”
Aerosols tend to be short lived, staying in the atmosphere for just days or weeks, whereas greenhouses gases can persist for centuries. Atmospheric chemists thus think the climate may respond most quickly to changes in aerosol levels.
NASA’s upcoming Glory satellite is designed to enhance current aerosol measurement capabilities to help scientists reduce uncertainties about aerosols by measuring the distribution and properties of the particles.
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Aerosols account for 45% of the warming, and soot accounts for 94% of the warming.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=impure-as-the-driven-snow
The total for soot and aerosols is 139% out of 100%, which means that you can screw your incandescent light bulbs back in without the Polar Bears or Penguins getting angry at you.
So let me get this straight, now the “death trains” assist in cooling the air and saving us from global warming?
I thought we got rid of that stuff and saved the Antarctic???
Oops, wrong pole. We now have to save the other pole.
No more aerosols in your Burma Shave.
Compressed air only.
Oh, hey, they didn’t say CO2 was an aerosol.
Too late, Steve, they outlawed the Edison bulb, and shipped the entire industry off to China where soot is king.
The global temperature graph AND the arctic temperature graph on display above BOTH show a much steeper warming curve from about 1915 to the early 1940s than from 1970 to present. Also it appears that the arctic began cooling in the early 40s slightly before the global cooling began. Perhaps that cooling of the arctic from about 1940 IS due to the particulates from the bombing in WWII. It certainly appears that WWII and the post war expansion halted and reversed the natural warming . Then, it appears that the Clean Air Act reinstated the natural clear sky warming. Perhaps the industrialization of the third world is our best tactic for halting this warming.
We better get back to capitalism, and make as much money as we can so we can buy all that stuff from India and China.
It’s the sensible thing to do.
I think I see where this one is going. With runaway global warming from man made CO2 coming under attack and the models about to fall apart without documented “positive feedback”, we turn to man made aerosols. Conveniently, the target remains the same; the burning of fossil fuels. “Slippin’ and uh-sliden’ – peepin’ and uh-hiden!””
Typo check, line 12.
“Reduces”, not “reductions.”
Maybe not, could be just strange syntax.
How about “with reductions”?
Please snip ad lib.
Naw, all China needs to do is to put a sock on their smokestacks.
Last time we mentioned it to them, they told us if they wanted something to get done about it, then get over there and pay for it yourselves.
This all has absolutely nothing to do with the Sun.
It operates under cold fusion, don’tcha know?
“Aerosols tend to be short lived, staying in the atmosphere for just days or weeks, whereas greenhouses gases can persist for centuries. Atmospheric chemists thus think the climate may respond most quickly to changes in aerosol levels.”
Hmmmm, I guess the atmospheric chemists have been missing all those trips to Bora Bora and the other nice places that climatologists get to go to.
I expected to see this phrase at the end of the article, “Yes we THINK that the aerosols are problematic, however we could be wrong, and that is why we need much more money for research.”
Actually, I think it reads better “which, with reductions” and a comma after emissions.
Reply: How about you don’t free compose in posts? ~ charles the moderator
The models say one thing, what does the actual physical evidence say?
Do the models make a specific, verifiable prediction – which if it does not come true, will falsify the models.
If no such prediction is being made, is GISS actually doing science?
Charles, I recommend that no one is allowed to be their own grammar nazi. Someone else has to care enough to correct those who post in haste.
I refuse to believe that at the expense of making my bathroom smell all rosey after I’m done reading the Sunday newspaper that I have contributed to rising surface temperatures in the Arctic.
However, if they’d like to ban newspapers in order to increase my toilet-flush turnover ratio, I will register no objection in the public record. Nevermind that modern wireless technology allows a laptop as a perfectly suitable substitute and no decrease in the aforementioned ratio.
By the way….did you guys know I could type this from my bathroom? I may have just added a few thousandths of a degree to the Arctic temperature record while typing this when I should have been flushing.
Maybe based on this research, Dr. Hansen will start lobbying for “Clean Coal” to reduce the soot emisions. However, it is hard to imagine there could be benefits for taking things out of the atmosphere that make you choke?
45% warming in arctic from aerosols, 50% over land from uhi, another 50% from land use changes, close to 100% overall from ocean currents and solar variation.
nothing left for co2. except cooling not warming.
will al gore change the sign of his temperature axis to promote co2 reduction and save us from the imminent ice age ?
wouldn’t that justify another nobel price ?
At the rate China’s placing coal-fired power plants on-line, it souldn’t be too long before their aerosols replace all those the U.S. eliminated with the Clean Air Act. Then we might just see Arctic cooling. This just might make it possible for Obama’s science guy, Holdren, to crow about success in cooling the climate without doing a thing, something that politicians seem to be good at doing.
I had thought with the recent comments of Holdren and a paper published Jan15th 2004 by U of M’s Penner (??) that these aerosols were responsible for cooling? The above paper posted here says:
“Aerosols are emitted by both natural and human sources. They can influence climate by reflecting or absorbing sunlight. The particles also affect climate by changing cloud properties, such as reflectivity. There is one type of aerosol that, according to the study, [reduces] rather than increases in its emissions seem to have promoted warming.” It is clear that sulfates are cooling- which aerosols are promoting the warming the carbon black?
It would seem that as this paper claims most of the warming found is in the artic and 45% of the arctic is the response to aerosols then it also follows AOGW CO2 models are seriously flawed. It is also interesting that this paper shifts the majority of the greenhouse gas problem to Asia.
Does this mean if we want to stop global warming all we need to do is repeal the clean air regulations?
The chart seems to show arctic temperatures starting to rise in 1970 and linked to passage of the clean Air Act. The act was passed in 1971 most of the restrictions were for particulates and it took an number of years after passage of CWA for the control equipment to be installed. The sulfur dioxide controls went in place in the early 1990s so I don’t see how this chart matches up.
It looks to me as if the Arctic temperatures rise pretty steadily until an English Monarch dies. Then a decline will soon begin and last for a decade or two.
Then right back up.
How old is Queen Elizabeth II?
You must have missed the line:
It was only last week I said that the tropics and Southern Hemisphere have remained the same temp for the past 30 years – someday some one will discover the cause of the arctic/NH temp rise.
well – now they have.
BTW – is this also the cause of the rise in temperature of the Antarctic peninsular?