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”
Climate change, the melting of glaciers, seas rising and falling, temps trending up and then trending down all seem to be inevitable parts of the natural train of events. Great Britain was once tropical, the rock that historic Edinburgh Castle sits on is a volcanic plug and much of the British topography, including the English Channel (dunno what the French call it!) was formed by retreating glaciers. Much of the American West was a shallow sea before the dinosaurs came to an end. Why do people get the idea that the process should be halted, and how incredibly arrogant to think that Man can do this. What we can do is take care of the environment with sensible measures, such as not discharging noxious waste into rivers, the sea or the air, etc. All the alarmist Chicken-Little stuff does is give the world’s snake oil salesmen a shot at organising another dishonest income stream.
That black carbon does have an effect on glacier melt rates seems a sensible proposition, but the official Indian study states that some glaciers are retreating and some are not which suggests that there is ample time for careful study and data-gathering of a phenomenon which maybe a non-problem.
“cooking with charcoal, wood, coal, animal dung”
exactly and heating from the same. Many do not even have chimneys.
This 75% of the population of India and China. American communists have daily articles from Red China with modern pictures. It is far from true.
I’ve held the position for years that soot was a major factor being ignored by just about everyone. Hopefully now that some extremely smart scientists have said that, others will begin to listen.
We don’t *NEED* to do anything about CO2. We *NEED* to get China and India to clean up their emissions like we have.
In 1991 Saddam torched the oil wells in Iraq. I seem to recall that at first there was fear of a “nuclear winter” scenario around the globe from this but it never happened due to the Himalayas. How much black carbon was deposited in the Himalayas at that time? How long did it take for the glaciers to recover from that?
This work appears (I haven’t read the original paper) to be the result of a computer model. This makes the conclusions very suspect without some very strong supporting empirical data, such as a dose-response effect. I would not take the work seriously until actual experiments show the effect is real.
Readers here may recall a few weeks back that the head of the Met Office here in England (John Hirst) said in an interview that they predicted the falling off of global temps after 1999. I made an enquiry to the Met Office for proof of that:
“Hello. Five minutes into this interview http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/the_daily_politics/8443687.stm John Hirst says that you predicted the levelling off of temperatures in 1999. Can you kindly provide the link to prove this? Thank you.”
Today I’ve had an extraordinary reply from the Met Office which has left me bewildered in its utter nonsense:
“Thank you for your email about John Hirst’s interview on Newsnight 6th January 2010. Implicit in Mr Hirst’s response to a question about average temperatures today and in 1999, he would possibly have had in mind the following references regarding average temperatures. A paper was published in the journal “Science” in 2007 and was a prediction that between 2005 and 2014 global temperatures would level for a time before rising again. To see a Met Office news release about this please see: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2007/pr20070810.html.
More details about decadal forecasting can be found at: http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/science/creating/monthsahead/decadal/index.html where you will see a decadal graph. There are four projections for different 10 year periods, beginning in 1986, 1995, 2005 and 2008. The white line, or in the last forecast, the blue line, shows the most likely prediction with the red shading and thin blue lines showing the range of confidence in the prediction. The black line shows the observed trend. I hope this help to clarify matters for you.”
They actually believe that somehow this explains Mr Hirst’s statement! It’s Alice In Wonderland stuff.
@ur momisugly George Tetley (03:09:44) :
Indeed. Having spent a couple years in various 3rd world backwaters myself, I understand your comment and pov precisely. There are many parts of this planet that are absolutely medieval and some that are still stone age, with all that implies. For people who have never lived in anything close to those circumstances, it is impossible for them to understand it. And it is equally impossible to adequately describe it to them, even in pictures or video. Therefore, they will never understand that raising the cultural level of the entire world to that of the industrialized nations is also impossible. But it is quite possible for the modern world to regress.
OT, but congratulations! The Spectator
“, will people living further down the vallies notice any difference as a result of the Vogon action ?”
Only if they do not have to listen to the poetry.
@ur momisugly Geoff Sherrington
“New reactor construction start in China. First concrete has been poured for Yangjiang unit 2 in Guangdong province in China. This is a 1080 MWe largely indigenous design, the second of four being built as phase 1 on the site. This brings to 16 the number of reactors under construction in China, with 35 more planned to start building in the next three years.”
Should make a dent in the soot and CO2, eh
Not one bit, unless you mean making a dent in slowing CO2 emission growth. The number of new plants of this size required to meet the annual increase in electricity demand in China is ~30 per year. Assuming it takes 2 years to construct, they are building nuclear on a pace of ~10/year, only one third of what is needed. The balance is being met by coal.
I would however say this is why it was a little disingenuous when they graciously offered a reduction in carbon intensity target at Copenhagen. It was already in the works. From the increase in nuke power alone they will reach they intensity target.
There have been pictures available for years of the huge brown cloud that extends hundreds of miles from the Indian coast out into the ocean. What’s worth noting is the reason *why* this has been something no one in “the movement” wants to talk about.
Smog, soot, and other particulates is directly caused by the people living in the area – and what one of the principles of the church of AGW is that *No* fault or blame can be layed on third world peoples or nations, and *all* blame and cost must be piled on the industrialized nations of the west.
The rule is: If you can’t blame it on the west, don’t talk about it.
Soot deposits causing local warming and melting of galciers is an example of man made caused weather/climate change. Is this paper published on this site because it is an example of this and so supporting warming arguments? Or is it trying to divert attention from man made increases in CO2, because that is more difficult to deal with – which is implied in the first point of the initial Reply. Either way this paper shows how man is impacting significantly on the environment in a way that is harmful to future generations
At least the head in the sand (or should it be soot) commentators remain consistent – I always hear echos of “No surrender” when I read through their ‘rebutals’.
Soot is the by product of incomplete combustion of hydrocarbon fuels. This is usually due to poor design/maintenance of boilers and engines. If you employ filters to remove it you haven’t solved the original problem. If, however, you improve the combustion process, you get more energy from the same amount of fuel, or use less of it to start with. The first option has the downside? of converting the soot to CO2. But as seems to be generally agreed (on here at least), this is less damaging than the soot. The best option is to use less fuel to start with, but it costs money to use the technology we are familiar with in the “developed” world.
MattN (05:02:49) : puts it very succinctly with his comment:
“We don’t *NEED* to do anything about CO2. We *NEED* to get China and India to clean up their emissions like we have.”
We need to be very careful in our evaluation of reseasrch results like this. There is a tendency that all science is now tainted because of the Hockeystick Team. That because AGW is a hoax that any science related to climate must also be wrong. Fortunately science does not work that way. I’m not saying this research is correct, that’s what more research is for. I’m just saying be cautious in out right rejecting this because of the past history of climate science. Each item must be evaluated on it’s own.
If this study is true, then it seems to me that a careful study elsewhere on the planet can be done to compare. Maybe wind patterns will show where the soot lands the most and correlate that with the melting rate.
To proclaim without evidence that humans are not having an impact on the planet and climate in some way is niave. We do. The question is, to what effect, by how much, to what extent and is it bad? That has to be answered one item at a time.
With recent cold records, seems to me any additional heating we can apply would be good.
Alan the Brit. You are not proving anything with your little piece on the innocuousness of carbon. Things (like carbon) are only dangerous if they are in the wrong place. The fact that we use carbon in our water filters is irrelevant as to whether it causes problems when sprinkled on to ice.
A bit like water. Nice in a glass, fine in your stomach, but more of a problem in the cabins on your ship, or in your luncgs.
“Our simulations showed… blah, blah, blah”
I’m sorry, but I find that more often than not I automatically tune out when I see that phrase.
It seems to me that you agree with IPCC:
“In its 2007 report, the IPCC estimated for the first time the direct radiative forcing of black carbon from fossil fuel emissions at + 0.2 W/m2, and the radiative forcing of black carbon through its effect on the surface albedo of snow and ice at an additional + 0.1 W/m2.[12] More recent studies and public testimony by many of the same scientists cited in the IPCC’s report estimate that emissions from black carbon are the second largest contributor to global warming after carbon dioxide emissions, and that reducing these emissions may be the fastest strategy for slowing climate change.[5][13]”
“According to the IPCC, “the presence of black carbon over highly reflective surfaces, such as snow and ice, or clouds, may cause a significant positive radiative forcing.”[26] The IPCC also notes that emissions from biomass burning, which usually have a negative forcing[27], have a positive forcing over snow fields in areas such as the Himalayas.[28]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_carbon
David Becker, Ph.D. (05:09:29) :
Gather all the data on cloud-seeding programs.
Look at the results in terms of where the precipitation fell in the region for up to 3 years afterwards. There you will find your empirical data.
After 35 years of picking up the paper or hearing on the news that so & so is going to ‘enhance’ the season’s precip in Nowhere, Particular my ears perk up.
I know what comes next.
Peter gets robbed and Paul gets a dividend.
Next 1-3 yrs Paul’s allowance is subject to hidden fees.
Nothing changes except the locale affected and how long before the account is settled in full.
“MattN (05:02:49) :
I’ve held the position for years that soot was a major factor being ignored by just about everyone. Hopefully now that some extremely smart scientists have said that, others will begin to listen.
We don’t *NEED* to do anything about CO2. We *NEED* to get China and India to clean up their emissions like we have.”
Spot on MattN. Someone else commented about pollution in the Midlands in their youth. My parents used to tell me about the pea-soupers in London, thankfully a vague memory now. For the millions living either side of the Himalayas, the governments of India and China ought to be cleaning up their pollution to protect not just the respiratory health of their citizens but also to protect the glaciers on which they are dependant for their water. I don’t think the question of the time it takes for the glaciers to melt is relevant here (unless it can be proven to have a very damaging effect), but the atmospheric pollution could be easily controlled. The cost is another matter and I daresay it is easier for those governments to blame CO2 and obtain guilt money from the west to pay for it but there must come a time when they have to take responsibility for their own countries. They can learn quickly from our past mistakes and benefit immediately from the technology that has been developed to control particulate pollution. History is not always a bad thing.
It may be a computer model and perhaps it should be reviewed (has it been peer-reviewed and published in a journal?) but it should not be dismissed out of hand because of it.
aMINO aCIDS iN mETEORITES (23:03:04) :
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?
++++
I’m sorry, it is a little unclear what you’re suggesting here. . . could you spell it out?
LBNL is part of the executive branch, headed by President Obama, he of Copenhagan hectoring, EPA CO2 regulating, cap ‘n trade, etc. . . Cheney & Co have been gone for some time now. LBNL is also home to Ben “Wish I could get those skeptics in a dark alley” Santer.
This is how global warming science works.
1. CO2 is increasing
2. Any observed or imagined phenomena are blamed on (1)
3. Write a paper describing (2) in scary language, and get on the front page of the BBC website
This is a really great read, but I too feel like we can’t champion this because it’s based on computer models. It’s no more real than all of the BS that alarmists have been throwing at us.
TerryS (03:28:42) :
Carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for 100 years … Menon says
Where does this 100 years come from? I’ve looked at the discussion paper and this claim isn’t made anywhere in the paper.
As far as I can tell, this is direct from the IPCC themselves who are the world’s leading authority on Climate Change, allegedly, & the only ones to claim such a thing, completely arbitrarily it would seem. Of 25 or so studes from the 1990 to 2005 or thereabouts seems to produce a range of between 5 years & 25 years, with a dominant mean of about 7 years. I can send you a link if I can find it in my bulging lever-arch file on AGW where you can read a summary of it, although others may be able to do better in shorter timeframe?
I’m not sure why this report is inherently problematic for IPCC. While they blew the date pretty badly originally, it should be remembered that IPCC actually stands for “Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change” rather than “Intergovernmental Panel on C02 Changes”. They can easily add next time trying to shake-down “rich” countries for black carbon suppression as well. “Alms for the glaciers! Alms for the glaciers!” is the real overarching theme they care about, this just puts another arrow in the quiver.
Good on them.
Perhaps India will stop the pollution it spews out before they all die of thrist.