Also, see below the “Continue reading” line for an impressive scientific visualization video of black carbon being transported around the globe.
University of Iowa News Release July 27, 2010
UI researcher finds black carbon implicated in global warming
Increasing the ratio of black carbon to sulphate in the atmosphere increases climate warming, suggests a study conducted by a University of Iowa professor and his colleagues and published in the July 25 issue of the journal Nature Geoscience. No paper was provided with the press release.
Black carbons — arising from such sources as diesel engine exhaust and cooking fires — are widely considered a factor in global warming and are an important component of air pollution around the world, according to Greg Carmichael, Karl Kammermeyer Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering in the UI College of Engineering and co-director of the UI’s Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research. Sulfates occur in the atmosphere largely as a result of various industrial processes.
Carmichael’s colleagues in the study were V. Ramanathan and Y. Feng of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, Calif.; S-C. Yoon and S-W. Kim of Seoul National University, South Korea; and J. J. Schauer of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
In order to conduct their study, the researchers made ground-level studies of air samples at Cheju Island, South Korea, and then sampled the air at altitudes between 100 and 15,000 feet above the ground using unmanned aircrafts (UAVs).
They found that the amount of solar radiation absorbed increased as the black carbon to sulphate ratio rose. Also, black carbon plumes derived from fossil fuels were 100 percent more efficient at warming than were plumes arising from biomass burning.
“These results had been indicated by theory but not verified by observations before this work,” Carmichael said. “There is currently great interest in developing strategies to reduce black carbon as it offers the opportunity to reduce air pollution and global warming at the same time.”
The authors suggest that climate mitigation policies should aim to reduce the ratio of black carbon to sulphate in emissions, as well as the total amount of black carbon released.
In a paper published in May 2008 in Nature Geoscience, Carmichael and Ramanathan found that black carbon soot from diesel engine exhaust and cooking fires — widely used in Asia — may play a larger role than previously thought in global warming. They said that coal and cow dung-fueled cooking fires in China and India produce about one-third of black carbon; the rest is largely due to diesel exhaust in Europe and other regions relying on diesel transport. The paper also noted that soot and other forms of black carbon could equal up to 60 percent of the current global warming effect of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas.
Carmichael is chair of the scientific advisory group for the World Meteorological Organization’s GURME (Global atmospheric watch Urban Research Meteorology and Environment) project and chair of the scientific advisory group for the Shanghai Expo pilot project on air quality forecasting. He has worked with Shanghai authorities for three years to help develop an early warning system for air quality problems and heat waves.
The study was funded by National Science Foundation.
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Tiny air pollution particles commonly called soot, but also known as black carbon, are in the air and on the move throughout our planet. Black carbon enters the air when fossil fuels and biofuels, such as coal, wood, and diesel are burned. Since black carbon readily absorbs heat from sunlight, the particles can affect Earth’s climate, especially on a regional scale. Though global distribution of soot remains difficult to measure, NASA researchers use satellite data and computer models to better understand how these short-lived particles influence Earth’s climate, cryosphere, and clouds. This scientific data visualization uses data from the GEOS5 GOCART climate model to show black carbon’s atmospheric concentration from August to November in 2009.
Credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio
Roger Knights says:
July 29, 2010 at 6:22 pm
“If the greenies and their followers are howling “Do something,” then funding China & other countries with loans to install scrubbers on their coal-burning plants (and choo-choos?) would provide lots of bang for the buck and not bankrupt the world. A win-win solution?”
I think you are right.
Maybe ask Washington to demolish Al Gores new house by the ocean too.
Just to follow the precautionary principle, you know?
Co2 causes warming? If there were no other factors involved in the atmosphere it could. But in earth’s atmosphere adding co2 causes cooling not warming. If you want an atmosphere where co2 causes warming you’re going to have to go to a different planet.
I’ve posted on this before, in the “Soot And The Arctic Ice – A Win-Win Policy Based On Chinese Coal Fired Power Plants” article (August 21, 2009), but I think it is worth repeating, because most people would not realise the extent to which there are cycles to China’s development, and when power plant building gets out of synch with those, there are power shortages (e.g. 2004) and the result is less efficient power production and more soot as people turn to diesel.
It would not surprise me at all if there was a link between the recovery in sea ice extent since 2007 and the cleaning up of power production since about 2005 (I assume there is a lag, as the dirtied snow/ice needs to actually melt to get itself out of the system). Here is my earlier post:
“This is a very worthwhile approach, but don’t just stop at coal-fired power. Also look at diesel.
When China has power shortages (as in 2004) its factories turn to their backup diesel generators. These are inefficient, expensive to run, and very polluting, but they do have the advantage that they are on-site, so the factory’s operation can’t be affected by electricity rationing, as it would be if it was depending on the local grid.
I have seen the effect of this in Hong Kong, which is just across the border from Guangdong, one of China’s manufacturing bases. There are lots of other things going on – e.g. Hong Kong’s own efforts to control vehicle pollution, Guangdong’s move up the value chain to less polluting manufacturing – and this is purely anecdotal – my personal experience of looking out of the window in 2004/2005 and thinking that the air was terrible and this was no place to raise children.
However, what I can say – again purely anecdotally – is that the air improved shortly thereafter, and those improvements seemed to coincide with China sorting out its power shortages. Those power shortages ended by China getting more big coal-fired power stations online, so that factories could moth-ball their diesel generators.”
It was only a matter of time before this type of thing would rise to the surface of the AGW cesspool. The plot all along was obvious, to eventually get to population reduction, and in a BIG way. What high density population countries create the most “manmade’ pollution? India and China!
So, ippso facto, what’s the ultimate answer to the Anthroprogenic Global Warming problem? You guessed it! Population reduction in India and China. Huuuummm…. idiots need to be very careful about their ’causes’ and ‘crusades’, they sometimes have very severe unintended consequences, like getting themselves and a few billion other people killed in yet another World War.
PS: I have to admit, the ‘solution’ they appear to be moving toward will definitely solve the AGW problem; wellllll… the ‘A’ in the AGW problem, in any case.
There seems to be an error in this article, not that I wish to put a fine point on it, but that ice is actually made from the most common green house gas: Water. In fact the photo shows various phases of water: solid, liquid, and invisible gas.
That is not to suggest that soot is not a problem.
Another opportunity for a real farm boy. Back in the very early Sixties, I became responsible for two commercial “chicken houses” which together held 13,000 chickens until they were old enough to be broilers. I was twelve years old. I think there were ten large coal stoves in each house. Yep, I know soot. Actually, everyone with a little age knows soot. In 1950, most homes in the USA were heated by coal. I could have told everyone about the relative impact of soot on ice and snow. I could have told everyone about the relative danger of coal-fired industry in southeast China. But no one values experience any longer, just peer-reviewed articles and obscenely false movies. No Nobel for me.
Jimbo says:
July 29, 2010 at 7:29 pm
“[…]Black carbon is being constantly released I think so its lifetime is irrelevant.”
The lifetime can’t be irrelevant as it determines the amount of Black Carbon that accumulates. If the lifetime is such an irrelevant fact, this must also hold for the number they come up with – that it causes 0.6 times the “climate forcing” of CO2.
They had space enough in their press release to tell us that they sampled the air between 100 and 15000 ft. They had space enough to suggest policies – which should not be their job; we have politicians for that.
You know, i look at the information that they pack into their press release, and it is not about facts, it is not about science, it uses science for the primary purpose, and that purpose is agitprop – agitation and propaganda. If that is the job of universities these days, they surely have no business telling me the lifetime of Black Carbon, and you’re right, it’s irrelevant, it’s futile; we don’t even have to talk about Black Carbon here, why not just name it substance X.
I hate it when people italicize their comments, but this is an occassion that calls for just such:
There is something very wrong with the Greenie movement when they are concerned with the fate of 25,000 polar bears (who are STILL ALIVE!!), but they won’t address the 500,000-1,000,000 people who die from inhaled soot EACH YEAR (who are DEAD FOREVER!!!) while they cook their food or heat their hovels using animal dung or open wood fires, and the resultant soot may also be contributing to global warming and Arctic thawing. (And don’t get me started on the 500,000-2,000,000 people who die from malaria each year, and the untold newly-infected tens of millions in the developing world who end up suffering from malaria because of the DDT ban in those countries.)
And old joke/question – do the enviros and liberals prefer penguins or people? Today, the answer is obvious.
Sick.
What? What is the “real problem”? Is it this? I could go on and on but you need to examine your statement in light of a LOT of issues then come back and make your case.
Phil M2. says:
July 29, 2010 at 3:29 pm
kwik says:
July 29, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Well, since we cannot thrust them on anything else, why thrust them on this?
I thought we were the ones getting thrusted!
Phil 🙂
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
LOL!
In the end our votes will thrust them.
DirkH says:
July 29, 2010 at 7:56 pm
———-
I stand corrected, my bad.
Perhaps someone at the EPA should use Microsoft Word to change all occurrences of “Carbon Dioxide” and “CO2” to “Black Carbon” in their recent pronouncements.
Perhaps the real money is to be made in black carbon credit trading.
PeteM says:
July 29, 2010 at 2:35 pm
“….how much does the temperatue of this planet have to rise before we hear information here that recognises where the real problem is ?”
It has to rise. It hasn’t. You believe all that statist propaganda. Poor dude.
UI researcher finds black carbon implicated in global warming
Are they finding any cooling? Because that’s what’s going on right now. Currently on a small scale, and for 1000’s of years on a large scale.
Carbon on ice is cumulative in many cases. Imagine you have a winter’s worth of precipitation that falls mixed with some small amount of carbon black. As the snow melts down, the carbon black will become concentrated on the surface. Now imagine another year’s precipitation. If the next summer melts down to the previous summer’s level, the carbon on the surface should be the sum of both years.
In an area that retains snow but has significant melt back such as a glacier in a sub-polar region, it should be possible to find the record melt year recorded as a layer of significantly greater soot in a core section. You might not be able to tell exactly what year that was, but you should be able to tell how far we currently are from that record melt year. That probably only works for the period since we started burning significant amounts of coal but a record melt should have the accumulated soot from many years concentrated in one layer.
On the serious side, relative to CO2, I think black carbon is both a more plausible and a more easily controlled agent of anthropogenic weather modification. Perhaps some of us have a tendency to overestimate our ability to modify the climate of this planet. Right now, we do appear to be in the midst of a modest cooling phase. As with CO2, there could be undue black carbon alarmism.
“Increasing the ratio of black carbon to sulphate in the atmosphere increases climate warming”
Serious logic and observation failure.
For the last decade, the climate hasn’t been warming.
Unless sulphates have been increasing too?
“The paper also noted that soot and other forms of black carbon could equal up to 60 percent of the current global warming effect of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas.”
So nothing much to worry about then, especially since according to this study, co2 has to give up a lot of the warming attributed to it in order to accomodate this new factor.
How much soot comes from natural forest fires compared to human sources?
A study a few years ago by a team from the University of California Irvine (UCI) said that up to 50% of the warming in the Arctic was due to black carbon soot.
The good news is that it’s easy and relatively inexpensive to reduce it! Now if we could just get China to adopt US EPA regulations for diesels….
Interesting.
Back during the Medieval Climate Optimum (MCO), there were more people than previous, and during that time, people used wood, coal, peat, and dung for fires.
Now, near the end of that period, there were more people than at the beginning, and as much is revealed by the grain market production figures and sales.
Imagine all that carbon effluent put into the atmosphere!
As the Earth began its Little Ice Age (LIA) phase, people of necessity burnt more of the carbon-based materials in order to keep warm.
So, one must ask: With todays cleaner burning engines and with the advent of electricity-based appliances which require hardly any carbon-based fuels to generate electricity, what the actual carbon load is in the atmosphere, as opposed to the MCO and LIA periods.
Now remember here, the amount of carbon emission back in the MCO was far higher than now —for the fuel sources used— yet there arrived the LIA.
Imagine that: All that carbon in the air, and the Earth still sunk into a cold, miserable period, where many died of starvation, disease and exposure.
So then, the modern take on the matter doesn’t square at all with the past history of things carbon soot.
All the pictures in the world of carbon soot covered ice floes, doesn’t change the fact of what happened back then.
Nasif Nahle says: “The chance of absorbing IR photons by the carbon dioxide is quite low due to its exiguous mass fraction in the atmosphere. I have made the calculations and the mean free path for a photon without “touching” a molecule of carbon dioxide is 48.02 m. It means that the photon travels an average of 48.02 m without being absorbed by a molecule of CO2. The time the photon will take for leaving the atmosphere without “touching” a molecule of carbon dioxide is 0.411 seconds.
“Fortunately for living beings on Earth, there are lots of molecules of water vapor (10000 ppmV – 50000 ppmV), nitrogen (780000 ppmV) and oxygen (208000 ppmV), and dust particles (highly variable) and other substances, including microscopic living beings (ice nucleators), that intercept photons before they leave the Earth’s atmosphere.”
Intriguing calculations, Nasif. I’m not sure I follow how you did these calcs, how far up you took as “atmosphere,” mean free path calculation, densities assumed, and so forth. If you have time, I’d be curious to see what your calculations come up with for infrared radiation into the ionosphere (for both quiet sun and noisy sun). Tell us more.
H.R. says: “I found this post to be quite sootable for mass consumption. (Ouch! Sorry.)”
You been snorting coke or something, HR?
“Marko says:
July 29, 2010 at 2:34 pm
I’m still waiting for critical thinkers to explain how methane, a “fossil” fuel, came to comprise much of Saturn’s moon Titan.”
that’s a big question for me too. no one seems to know. how odd?
cheers David
Dirty Ice: Soot is three times more effective than carbon dioxide
This assumes that we know how “effective” CO2 is – in warming climate. We dont know this to an order of magnitude, or even if it is effective at all.
More examples of inductive, assumption built on assumption, house of cards “science”.
I ask you all this simple question: Since 1900, where have the hundreds of billions of pounds of rubber and asphalt dust gone?
The short simple answer is: Anywhere and everywhere! Every year the amount of this dust released into the enviroment keeps increasing.
Try this: Take Post-It note and dab it on the dust on the top of your car until it doesn’t stick anymore. Then examine the dirty sticky strip with viewer with about 30x magnificaton. Note the enormous amount of tiny black particles. Also note numerous highly reflective particles which are probaby mica from the rocks in concrete.
Another source of light-absorbing particles is metallic dust from disk rotors and brake drums as well as the rust that falls off cars and is ground to tiny particles by tires.
In southern Caifornia the rubber and asphalt dust could act as an accelerant for brush fires. Homeowners there should probably wash off the roofs their houses before fire season.
Since most major cities are located on the coasts of the continents, it would be of interest to determine concentration of these black particle in the ocean waters.
Lastly, we city folks breath in the really tiny particles (5 microns<) of rubber and asplhalt dust, and these probably cause respiratory problems such as asthma in childern.
899 says:
July 29, 2010 at 11:57 pm (Edit)
Now remember here, the amount of carbon emission back in the MCO was far higher than now —for the fuel sources used— yet there arrived the LIA.
Imagine that: All that carbon in the air, and the Earth still sunk into a cold, miserable period, where many died of starvation, disease and exposure.
Remember the total world population was a lot lower then, and got even lower when the Black Death wiped out a 1/3 of the population of Europe in the C14th. But, the world had a lot more forests then too, so how many more tonnes of soot went into the atmosphere due to natural forest fires?
Not so easy to determine these factors I would say.