From Lawrence Berkeley National Labs, and announcement that comes at a very inconvenient time for IPCC and Pachauri while their “Glaciergate” issue rages. Aerosols and black carbon are tagged as the major drivers. And no mention of disappearance by 2035.
Black Carbon a Significant Factor in Melting of Himalayan Glaciers
The fact that glaciers in the Himalayan mountains are thinning is not disputed. However, few researchers have attempted to rigorously examine and quantify the causes. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory scientist Surabi Menon set out to isolate the impacts of the most commonly blamed culprit—greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide—from other particles in the air that may be causing the melting. Menon and her collaborators found that airborne black carbon aerosols, or soot, from India is a major contributor to the decline in snow and ice cover on the glaciers.
“Our simulations showed greenhouse gases alone are not nearly enough to be responsible for the snow melt,” says Menon, a physicist and staff scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division. “Most of the change in snow and ice cover—about 90 percent—is from aerosols. Black carbon alone contributes at least 30 percent of this sum.”
Menon and her collaborators used two sets of aerosol inventories by Indian researchers to run their simulations; their results were published online in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.
The actual contribution of black carbon, emitted largely as a result of burning fossil fuels and biomass, may be even higher than 30 percent because the inventories report less black carbon than what has been measured by observations at several stations in India. (However, these observations are too incomplete to be used in climate models.) “We may be underestimating the amount of black carbon by as much as a factor of four,” she says.
The findings are significant because they point to a simple way to make a swift impact on the snow melt. “Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for 100 years, but black carbon doesn’t stay in the atmosphere for more than a few weeks, so the effects of controlling black carbon are much faster,” Menon says. “If you control black carbon now, you’re going to see an immediate effect.”
The Himalayan glaciers are often referred to as the third polar ice cap because of the large amount of ice mass they hold. The glacial melt feeds rivers in China and throughout the Indian subcontinent and provide fresh water to more than one billion people.
Atmospheric aerosols are tiny particles containing nitrates, sulfates, carbon and other matter, and can influence the climate. Unlike other aerosols, black carbon absorbs sunlight, similar to greenhouse gases. But unlike greenhouse gases, black carbon does not heat up the surface; it warms only the atmosphere.
This warming is one of two ways in which black carbon melts snow and ice. The second effect results from the deposition of the black carbon on a white surface, which produces an albedo effect that accelerates melting. Put another way, dirty snow absorbs far more sunlight—and gets warmer faster—than pure white snow.
Previous studies have shown that black carbon can have a powerful effect on local atmospheric temperature. “Black carbon can be very strong,” Menon says. “A small amount of black carbon tends to be more potent than the same mass of sulfate or other aerosols.”
Black carbon, which is caused by incomplete combustion, is especially prevalent in India and China; satellite images clearly show that its levels there have climbed dramatically in the last few decades. The main reason for the increase is the accelerated economic activity in India and China over the last 20 years; top sources of black carbon include shipping, vehicle emissions, coal burning and inefficient stoves. According to Menon’s data, black carbon emitted in India increased by 46 percent from 1990 to 2000 and by another 51 percent from 2000 to 2010.
This map of the change in annual linear snow cover from 1990 to 2001 shows a thick band (blue) across the Himalayas with decreases of at least 16 percent while a few smaller patches (red) saw increases. The data was collected by the National Snow and Ice Data Center.
However, black carbon’s effect on snow is not linear. Menon’s simulations show that snow and ice cover over the Himalayas declined an average of about one percent from 1990 to 2000 due to aerosols that originated from India. Her study did not include particles that may have originated from China, also known to be a large source of black carbon. (See “Black soot and the survival of the Tibetan glaciers,” by James Hansen, et al., published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.) Also the figure is an average for the entire region, which saw increases and decreases in snow cover. As seen in the figure, while a large swath of the Himalayas saw snow cover decrease by at least 16 percent over this period, as reported by the National Snow and Ice Data Center, a few smaller patches saw increases.
Menon’s study also found that black carbon affects precipitation and is a major factor in triggering extreme weather in eastern India and Bangladesh, where cyclones, hurricanes and flooding are common. It also contributes to the decrease in rainfall over central India. Because black carbon heats the atmosphere, it changes the local heating profile, which increases convection, one of the primary causes of precipitation. While this results in more intense rainfall in some regions, it leads to less in other regions. The pattern is very similar to a study Menon led in 2002, which found that black carbon led to droughts in northern China and extreme floods in southern China.
“The black carbon from India is contributing to the melting of the glaciers, it’s contributing to extreme precipitation, and if black carbon can be controlled more easily than greenhouse gases like CO2, then it makes sense for India to regulate black carbon emissions,” says Menon.
Berkeley Lab is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory located in Berkeley, California. It conducts unclassified scientific research for DOE’s Office of Science and is managed by the University of California. Visit our Website at www.lbl.gov/
Additional information:
- Read the paper, “Black carbon aerosols and the third polar ice cap”
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
So let’s be clear – the Himalayan glaciers are thinning, with potentially dangerous consequences. Yes we must be clear about the causes, and the science, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that they are thinning.
REPLY: And let’s not lose sight of the fact that:
1) Something can be done about black soot and aersols from India, with positive benefits all around
2) CO2 is not the main driver
3) The threat of melt has been wildly and irresponsibly exaggerated by the IPCC for the purposes of getting grants
4) The projection for melt that is realistic is the year 2350…or beyond, Plenty of time to do something about #1
“We may be underestimating the amount of black carbon by as much as a factor of four,” she says.
And, of course, her findings also could be wrong.
Is it wrong of me to be automatically skeptical of anything coming from Lawrence Berkeley National Labs since it is part of U.S. Government (the Dept. of Energy) and receives $500 million in funding from the U.S. Government?
vibenna (22:54:32) :
So let’s be clear – the Himalayan glaciers are thinning, with potentially dangerous consequences.
So the sky is falling?
Until you know one way or the other what the consequences are it may be wise to not assume the worst.
BTW, what’s your angle in running around like your hair is on fire?
For me this is the same way believable like the CO2 AGW theory.
vibenna (22:54:32) :
So let’s be clear – the Himalayan glaciers are thinning,
Ice all over the world has been receding since the end of the Little Ice Age. Can you prove to me this thinning is due mainly to anything else other than the earth emerging from the Little Ice Age?
It’s about time that we are starting to see some real science, rather that the CO2 boogy-man being trotted out; methinks it’s looking a bit tired and tatty.
I think that anyone, who has been to China and/or India, would be aware of the problem of black soot (or more broadly, smog).
As I understand it (and let me disclose, I am no scientist) the technology that is used in the ‘west’ to reduce smog particles has not been widely used in the two most populous nations on earth. This is simply due to economics – they can’t afford it. Adding $1,000 the the price of a diesel truck in the west is almost an irrelevancy, but would be an usurious impost on a developing country’s industries.
I remember reading a report a decade (or so) ago about the high cost of replacing India’s and China’s old diesel trucks and filtering the emissions of their coal fired generators to match the standards of the west. I suspect that the “high cost” would probably have already seen some change out the amount that has been frittered away on the alter of the AGW religion.
Pity … we could have been there by now.
The real answer to climate change lies in BIG MONEY AND POWER.
follow the trails http://euro-med.dk/?p=11956
Horsepuckey
http://moef.nic.in/downloads/public-information/MoEF%20Discussion%20Paper%20_him.pdf
Himalayan Glaciers
A State-of-Art Review of Glacial Studies,
Glacial Retreat and Climate Change
– V.K.Raina, Ex. Deputy Director General, Geological Survey of India
At first sight I failed to recognize the “not” in the headline……
This makes a lot of sense to me, as someone who spends a lot of time in the mountains.
However, we could never tax “black” carbon, obvious innit??
Ricardo’s points well taken. The scrubbing technology we use in the West is not installed in India or China – and it should be. China, given the money we send them in trade can afford it. India should receive assistance from World bank or G20 loans to install it.
There are effective off-shelf technologies to address these types of pollutants. World government and carbon trading need not apply.
vibenna (22:54:32) :
“So let’s be clear – the Himalayan glaciers are thinning, with potentially dangerous consequences. Yes we must be clear about the causes, and the science, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that they are thinning.”
Lawrence Berkeley National Labs: “The glacial melt feeds rivers in China and throughout the Indian subcontinent and provide fresh water to more than one billion people.”
So let’s be clear (1) if the glaciers were not melting (‘thinning’) there would be no fresh water for one billion people (2) Glaciers melting as the planet comes out of a mini ice age is an entirely expected natural phenomenon (3) The scientific investigation in this case should be directed towards the question of whether the melt is dangerously exacerbated by anthropogenic causes and, if so, how those anthropogenic causes can be curtailed.
There is one trivial physical point that seems to be completely unappreciated in the Himalayan discussion: the greenhouse effect happens in the troposphere, and there’s only a small portion of the troposphere above the Himalayas.
In other words, the mountains are damn high and the greenhouse warming decreases with the altitude. In fact, the greenhouse warming switches to greenhouse cooling at a certain altitude – roughly speaking in most of the stratosphere.
Now, of course, there exists the huge discrepancy between the models and the reality concerning the altitude- and latitude- dependence of the warming trend, see e.g.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/08/greenhouse-warming-wrong-altitude-and.html
But at any rate, you can that the warming in the several-km elevation and 28 degrees North is nowhere close to the warming expected or seen in the Arctic.
Anthony – no argument with your Reply comments, except that a single study must be just a tentative finding
Amino acids .. some evidence is in the study Anthony is citing
But what I find richly ironic is that China and India are derailing Copenhagen because they want to industrialize. However, this study suggest that the people who will suffer most from their industrial emissions are … Themselves. They could seriously alter their watersheds, with unknown consequences. The soot from burning coal and oil may affect their water supplies, agriculture, and could lead to serious peasant unrest. I wonder if we’ll see a change in policy from China now?
“Potentially dangerous consequences” means in post-normal speak: This is our last chance to save the planet! It could be CO2 so let’s abolish it worldwide immediately! In the post-normal world, this kind of behaviour is called “precautionary”.
You see, it’s all really simple. Post-normal science doesn’t need to find real causes.
Finally.
Some reality from proper physics!
Thank you, Lawrence Berkeley physicists!
(And thank you for your integrity.)
vibenna (23:51:35) :
“…and could lead to serious peasant unrest.”
I’m speechless.
It nice to see that scientists who look at some of these alternatives are getting decent press, but in the end, this is just another computer model that has made up numbers with the scientists adding non-peer reviewed speculation to the press release.
In other words, par for the course. This particular example of pseudoscience just happens to agree with the skeptics position rather than the believers.
This comes into the category of ‘I thought we knew this already but apparently don’t.’ (The older you get the more studies fall into this category!)
In researching the history of arctic ice variations through the ages I came across various contemporary references from around 1850 made by Arctic scientists-including Scoresby-who had observed the effects of soot on the melting of ice and recorded it over a number of expeditions. The source was not from Tambora but thought to be from US industry (there is a graph of US emissions in the referenced paper below.)
This partly coincided with one of the considerable periodic melts of the Arctic sea ice cap and of Greenland glaciers.
There have been studies since, including this one where Hansen fingered Black carbon as the easiest cause of ice melt to eliminate.
Nature 2009
http://www.projectsurya.org/storage/nature-blackcarbon-7-2009.pdf
Now of course there must be more to it than that, as the greatest recorded melt of all in Viking times wouldn’t have had significant in put from Man.
So as a secondary cause of ice melt Black carbon sounds plausble-whether it is a primary cause is another matter.
Tonyb
In the late Fifties as a teenager I lived in what was called the Black Country to the NW of Birmingham in the British Midlands and remember the smogs and the crazy sepia sunsets. When I got to school on my bike, my eyes were often sore with grit, so I can well envisage the soot particle thing having experienced it first-hand. But I see that problem not as “global”, but localised – which can still mean very wide areas and areas affected downwind with large populations and ecologies affected. I know for instance that in Quebec, pollution from heavy industry around Chicago and Detroit is blamed for the heavy river fogs on the lower St. Lawrence. Don’t know how true this is, but I can buy into the idea of the effect of black carbon needing further research and eventual action, whereas I have never been convinced by the CO2-pollution claim (that’s why I follow this blog). But I speak as a concerned non-scientist.
OT: From the Beeb
Phishing attack nets 3 million euros of carbon permits
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8497129.stm
So finally a scam gets hit by a scam?
Keep in mind, this black carbon falls, rains, or snows out of the atmosphere rather quickly after winds disperse it, but when it falls on snow or ice, it doesn’t just go away. Not until enough of melt water can physically wash it off, it keeps absorbing the sun’s radiation day after day.
I use that principle yearly on my sidewalks and driveway. I rarely shovel. A small amount of saved ash from my fireplace is dusted on the surfaces the next day and I let the sun do the back-breaking work. It is not instant but the snow or ice melts days earlier than if the particles are not there, and what runs off is harmless fertilizer.
Does this get on the glaciers? You bet. Look at the map. I’ve been wondering when some honest physicist would raise this simple, logical reality to the public. How much of the arctic is affected also? However, the new pristine ice is clean now after the 2007 melt.
Aerosols are the least understood aspect of the climate. The Himalayas are one example. The question about whether black carbon is responsible for much of the Arctic melt is another.
And the more important one, raised by that skeptical bunch known as the “IPCC”, is whether aerosols actually cancel out the warming effect of CO2.
Those Hazy Skeptics at the IPCC
And find out more about the basic science behind CO2 – An Insignificant Trace Gas?
vibenna (23:51:35) :
Anthony – no argument with your Reply comments, except that a single study must be just a tentative finding
Amino acids .. some evidence is in the study Anthony is citing
But what I find richly ironic is that China and India are derailing Copenhagen because they want to industrialize. However, this study suggest that the people who will suffer most from their industrial emissions are … Themselves. They could seriously alter their watersheds, with unknown consequences. The soot from burning coal and oil may affect their water supplies, agriculture, and could lead to serious peasant unrest. I wonder if we’ll see a change in policy from China now?
I have to say that China is already seeing a rapid rise of unsettled peasent, last couple of years sees China having roughly 100,000 incidents that involve the conclict between peasents and the government, almost 10 times it was 10 years ago, due to all the developments in China. ( Chinese government is well known for grabbing land from the peasents for building stuff )
I do not feel that the government will do much to the issue, the central government may want to but the local government that enforce the law will be business-as-usual anyway. ( Failed to remind you that the Chinese government is the rightest government in the world as far as I can understand – nationalism, ruthless capitalism not catering the lower class, rapidly increasing armament, etc. )
Re…vibenna (23:51:35)
” But what I find richly ironic is that China and India are derailing Copenhagen because they want to industrialize.”
Yes, they want electrcity in homes for lights, heat and cooking, instead of burning wood and dung. What is Ironic? Life is full of choices, India and China are choosing modernization, which leads to less pollution, more efficient energy, lower population etc. Go summer camping in Yosemite to see what a city of small fires does.
However, this study suggest that the people who will suffer most from their industrial emissions are … Themselves.”
As mentioned, life is a trade off, you seam to only see the 1/2 empty side. Particulate pollution is a serious problem, so is not having basic energy and the health and benefits it can provide.
“They could seriously alter their watersheds, with unknown consequences.” The soot from burning coal and oil may affect their water supplies, agriculture, and could lead to serious peasant unrest. I wonder if we’ll see a change in policy from China now?”
They may be getting slighhtly more run off from the glaciers, and slightly less rain in the other areas, I to have no comment for the “peasent unrest”. I think and hope both China and India will move towards controlling particulate pollution, with “known” problems, and learn from “known” environmental mistakes the more developed world has made, and are still making.