From the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme via Eurekalert, some of the heat gets taken off CO2 as the ‘big kahuna’ of forcings, now there is another major player, one that we can easily do something about. I’ve often speculated that black carbon is a major forcing for Arctic sea ice, due to examples like this one. – Anthony
Reducing diesel engine emissions would reduce warming
![blackcarbonl[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/blackcarbonl1.jpeg?quality=83)
Black carbon is the second largest man-made contributor to global warming and its influence on climate has been greatly underestimated, according to the first quantitative and comprehensive analysis of this issue.
The landmark study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres today says the direct influence of black carbon, or soot, on warming the climate could be about twice previous estimates. Accounting for all of the ways it can affect climate, black carbon is believed to have a warming effect of about 1.1 Watts per square meter (W/m2), approximately two thirds of the effect of the largest man made contributor to global warming, carbon dioxide.
Co-lead author David Fahey from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said, “This study confirms and goes beyond other research that suggested black carbon has a strong warming effect on climate, just ahead of methane.” The study, a four-year, 232-page effort, led by the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) Project, is likely to guide research efforts, climate modeling, and policy for years to come.
The report’s best estimate of direct climate influence by black carbon is about a factor of two higher than most previous work, including the estimates in the last Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment released in 2007, which were based on the best available evidence and analysis at that time.
Scientists have spent the years since the last IPCC assessment improving estimates, but the new assessment notes that emissions in some regions are probably higher than estimated. This is consistent with other research that also hinted at significant under-estimates in some regions’ black carbon emissions.
The results indicate that there may be a greater potential to curb warming by reducing black carbon emissions than previously thought. “There are exciting opportunities to cool climate by reducing soot emissions but it is not straightforward. Reducing emissions from diesel engines and domestic wood and coal fires is a no brainer, as there are tandem health and climate benefits. If we did everything we could to reduce these emissions we could buy ourselves up to half a degree less warming–or a couple of decades of respite,” says co-author Professor Piers Forster from the University of Leeds’s Faculty of Earth and Environment.
![1-blackcarbonl[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/1-blackcarbonl1.jpeg?quality=83)
The research team quantified all the complexities of black carbon and the impacts of co-emitted pollutants for different sources, taking into account uncertainties in measurements and calculations. The study suggests mitigation of black carbon emissions for climate benefits must consider all emissions from each source and their complex influences on climate. Based on the analysis, black carbon emission reductions targeting diesel engines followed by some types of wood and coal burning in small household burners would have an immediate cooling impact.
In addition, the report finds black carbon is a significant cause of the rapid warming in the Northern Hemisphere at mid to high latitudes, including the northern United States, Canada, northern Europe and northern Asia. Its impacts can also be felt farther south, inducing changes in rainfall patterns from the Asian Monsoon. This demonstrates that curbing black carbon emissions could have significant impact on reducing regional climate change while having a positive impact on human health.
“Policy makers, like the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, are talking about ways to slow global warming by reducing black carbon emissions. This study shows that this is a viable option for some black carbon sources and since black carbon is short lived, the impacts would be noticed immediately. Mitigating black carbon is good for curbing short-term climate change, but to really solve the long-term climate problem, carbon dioxide emissions must also be reduced,” says co-lead author Tami Bond from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
FULL REPORT: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jgrd.50171/abstract
Images to use for reference in the report for this press release:
Figure 1.1 Schematic overview of the primary black carbon emission sources and the processes that control the distribution of black carbon in the atmosphere and determine its role in the climate system [Bond et al., 2013].
Figure 9.1 Quantitative estimates of black carbon climate forcing. This study indicates the direct effects due to black carbon are nearly twice the number reported in the 2007 IPCC Fourth Assessment [Bond et al., 2013].
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The International Global Atmospheric Chemistry (IGAC) Project was formed in 1990 to address growing international concern over rapid changes observed in the Earth’s atmosphere. IGAC operates under the umbrella of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) and is jointly sponsored by the international Commission on Atmospheric Chemistry and Global Pollution (iCACGP). IGAC’s mission is to coordinate and foster atmospheric chemistry research towards a sustainable world (www.igacproject.org). The IGAC International Project Office is hosted by the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado, USA.
The new assessment, “Bounding the role of black carbon in the climate system: A scientific assessment,” is published online at the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres, a journal of the American Geophysical Union, and can be accessed free of charge. The four coordinating lead authors are: Tami Bond (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Sarah Doherty (Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean, University of Washington, USA), David Fahey (NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory and Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, Boulder, USA) and Piers Forster (University of Leeds, UK).
Other co-authors are: T. Berntsen (Center for International Climate and Environmental Research-Oslo and Department of Geosciences, University of Oslo, Norway), B. J. DeAngelo (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), M. G. Flanner (University of Michigan, USA), S. Ghan (Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA), B.Kärcher (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany), D. Koch (Department of Energy, USA), S. Kinne (Max Planck Institute, Germany), Y. Kondo (University of Tokyo, Japan), P. K. Quinn (NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, USA), M. C. Sarofim (Environmental Protection Agency, USA), M. G. Schultz (Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Germany), M. Schulz (Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Norway), C. Venkataraman (Indian Institute of Technology, India), H. Zhang (China Meteorological Administration, China.), S. Zhang (Peking University, China), N. Bellouin (Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter, UK), S. K. Guttikunda (Desert Research Institute, USA), P. K. Hopke (Clarkson University, USA), M. Z. Jacobson (Stanford University, USA), J. W. Kaiser (European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts, UK; King’s College London, UK; and Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Germany), Z. Klimont (International Institute for Applied System Analysis, Austria), U. Lohmann (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich,, Switzerland), J. P. Schwarz (NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory and Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, USA), D. Shindell (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, USA), T. Storelvmo (Yale University, USA), S. G. Warren (University of Washington, USA), C. S. Zender (University of California, Irvine, USA).
Climate Ace says:
January 15, 2013 at 8:26 pm
Rogerknights
There were no attempts to put the fires out and I was told that they were deliberately lit. I did not find out the purpose of the fires
=========
Burning the jungle returns the nutients stored in the plants to the soil in preparation for planting crops. This type of agriculture is widespread in the tropics, not limited to Thailand.
Tropical soils are often nutirent poor. If you simply remove the jungle without burning in place you will get poorer yields. SE Asia’s famous “haze” is the result.
rogerknights says:
January 16, 2013 at 6:36 am
PPPS: Here’s a website for an organization that wants to build and distribute rocket stoves in the third world
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at $100+ each good luck.
PPPPPS: On this page of the site above, http://www.rocketstove.org/index.php/news, the following items appeared, followed by a link.
[this is beginning to look like marketing a product using Anthony’s property which is fine if he has agreed . . mod]
For all the warmists, scoftics and skeptics out there who want to understand how this research fits into the greater scheme of things, please consider the following:
BC is emitted largely from burning biomass and is accompanied by a healthy amount of organic carbon (OC) and the current net effect is cooling, slightly. BC is net warming and OC is net cooling. At least that is how it was viewed until this paper documented a need to recalculate the effect of BC and it even puts a value on it (with a large error bar up and down). The large error bar (which is thankfully provided instead of outrageous guesses without them) is caused not by a misunderstanding of how BC heats the earth, but by uncertainties about how clouds work. This is a very important contribution: large error bars, large uncertainties about clouds.
The heating of CO2 is calculated against a historical record (training the model) and to get a match they included CO2, and initially no BC or OC. Later, they assigned both some role and reduced the CO2 forcing to include BC (had to make room for it to train the models to the same result). Tami Bond et al are saying that the BC element has to be tripled. This implies that the role for CO2 has to be reduced in order to train the models again. Keep your eye on the ball, and stop being distracted by witty barbs about motive. This new knowledge immediately reduces the trading value of CO2 offsets. It also increases the value of BC reduction efforts.
As has been pointed out by several already, a great deal of BC is emitted by forest fires. Stop viewing that as a ‘stand alone’. Forest fires are net cooling because of the OC that is emitted with the BC. As is clear to the thinking reader, if forest fires or biomass fires or veld fires are reduced to zero, there was thought to be net cooling because of the offsetting OC. Now there is net warming (by corrected recalculation) and a reduced influence of CO2 (by re-training of the models). Remember that the net heating value of CO2 is the raw physics in a model meaning that it is tuned by fudge and jiggery-pokery until it reasonably matches reality during the 20th Century – at least that is the claim. Those calculations must now be significantly adjusted, discounting the CO2 heating value. It is unavoidable.
The introduction of refined cloud models will necessarily confine the range of BC impact and will clarify the role of BC and OC and CO2. This is good. Knowledge is good – it can be used to improve calculations.
A second and important misdirection I see in the comments above is the idea that burning diesel or coal necessarily emits BC. BC is from incomplete combustion. When it is complete, there isn’t any BC. Diesel, like paraffin (kerosene) can be burned extremely cleanly, but not in an old clunker with a maladjusted injector pump. I have measured coal stove emissions for hours at a go that were so low, the lab air was being scrubbed of all particles (BC and OC and fugitive dust) as it passed through the stove’s fire. The chimney on occasion for hours at time had zero PM2.5 while burning wet lignite (25% moisture). This shows that there is nothing ‘inherent’ in the coal that ‘produces particles’. The particles are produced by the combustion devices, not the fuel. No point blaming the fuel for the faults of the combustor. Lignite is supposed to be a ‘very dirty fuel’ but I showed that it is not if you bother to use a good burner design. Lignite has a higher H:C ratio and emits less CO2 per MJ of heat (if anyone cares about these things). It carries the ‘dirty’ label because it does not burn well in a power station designed to burn anthracite. Well…duh! Try putting diesel into your gas lawnmower and see what happens.
The particulate harm to humans, as Philip B has noted, is from inhaling BC in high doses. Very small BC particles can even get into the red blood corpuscles and cross the blood-brain barrier. The effects are real. Don’t smoke.
Bond et al refers to ‘co-emitted species’ which includes CO, a health-effect gas which is a product of incomplete combustion. Again, a well-designed device emits zero CO which I have also measured in operating domestic stoves, sometimes while simultaneously showing zero PM. Clean combustion is good for everyone. People, please stop guessing that all combustion processes produce particles.
There are several downsteam implications of Bond’s work. The most obvious (as mentioned right up front in the article) is that the calculated forcing influence of BC in climate models should be tripled and by implication, that of CO2 reduced by the same amount. Domestic stove funding (and fuel efficiency) is bound to get a boost, as will the fuel efficiency of all internal and external combustion vehicles because BC is a fuel energy loss. Cleaning up combustion is a far better idea than ‘sequestering CO2’ down a mine shaft.
Lastly, Climate Ace, I note your point about the system costs of, say, coal mining. This applies to all systems and initiatives including those that monomaniacally try to drive up energy prices as a policy as a means of forcing people to use less. It is hypocritical that you have not even touched on the damage the anti-CO2 crusade has already done to the global population, the global economy and the environment with harebrained and badly framed arguments, ‘carbon trading’ and even wilfully misrepresentative ‘science’, preferring to repeat, as you do, old slogans and hand-wave as if it contributes value to the consultation. Rather help us in this war against ignorance, perfidy and theft.
“When open burning emissions, which emit high levels of organic matter, are included in the total, the best estimate of net industrial-era climate forcing by all black-carbon- rich sources becomes slightly negative (-0.06 W m-2 with 90% uncertainty bounds of -1.45 to +1.29 W m-2).”
Key point from the abstract, overall net effect is zero. Elsewhere, they indicate that BC from diesel is probably the only addressable positive forcing, something that has already been addressed in the developed world.
While continuing to address BC and other particulates as “pollutants” and “probable health risks” can be justified, it’s impact on overall BC emissions and subsequent potential impact on AGW would appear minimal.
WJohn says:
January 16, 2013 at 2:02 am
“From my science class, proved by experiment – black things absorb more radiated heat from an external hot body than white shiny things. They also radiate more heat in the absence of the hot body. Will the soot covered snow/ ice absorb more heat during the day / arctic summer than it loses heat during night / arctic winter.”
Over the long haul, energy absorbed must equal energy radiated according to the First Law of Thermodynamics. That is the way it has been in the arctic for a long time. But year-to-year changes in summertime sea ice cause some people to tell us that mankind must be guilty of something. Ever get blamed for something you didn’t do? Just sacrifice something, maybe your weeks allowance and you will feel better. Whoever ends up with your money is called a rent-seeker.
I thought that the science was “settled” already.
I remain skeptical. In the vastness of the globe I find it difficult to believe that man’s puny diesel emission can effect the global climate. Don’t these particulates ever precipitate out of the atmosphere? If I recall wasn’t Gleik’s Pacific institute among the outfits assigned to go after diesel emissions. I also find it strange when the people that are investigating the soot “problem” also provide their proffered soot “solutions” at the conclusion. This aspect seems like it would be going beyond the expertise of the soot investigators.
ferd berple says: January 16, 2013 at 6:57 am
Climate Ace says:
January 15, 2013 at 8:26 pm
Rogerknights
There were no attempts to put the fires out and I was told that they were deliberately lit. I did not find out the purpose of the fires
=========
Burning the jungle returns the nutients stored in the plants to the soil in preparation for planting crops. This type of agriculture is widespread in the tropics, not limited to Thailand.
Tropical soils are often nutirent poor. If you simply remove the jungle without burning in place you will get poorer yields. SE Asia’s famous “haze” is the result.
=========================
Yes, these techniques are known as “slash and burn” and this is the age-old method of cultivation employed throughout the tropics of the world. The transient fertility added to the soil is soon exhausted and the cultivator has to move on and repeat the process elsewhere.
In Central America, there are thousands of abandoned Mayan pyramids that attest to the exhaustion of the tropical soils by this method of cultivation. The pyramids were abandoned to the jungle as soil fertility in the vicinity was exhausted. People emigrated, populations declined, food surpluses disappeared, and no longer could a priestly class be supported. Thus these priestly centers were abandoned time and again.
The slash and burn techniques continue in the Yucatan region, and if the wind is right, the smoke from these fires sometimes affect the air quality of the US Gulf Coast states, particularly Texas.
Panic peddlers like Climate Ace attribute the repeated abandonments of these Mayan priestly civil centers to some undefined climate change. It is a standard ploy of global-warming panic-peddlers to attribute decline of past civilizations to some sort of climate change.
For years I have tried to communicate the concern that black soot is melting ice, in sweden.
Sweden is, Im sorry to say, tip of the spear for the new world order, global everything, 1984, Orwell etc.
Well, thats my take on the soot issue.
If it saves $25 a year in money or sweat equity for firewood, it’s a worthwhile investment.
The forcings chart contains 2 medium LOSU, 2 low LOSU and 3 very low LOSU. Not sure I have a lot of confidence in their findings.
@Björn
>For years I have tried to communicate the concern that black soot is melting ice, in sweden.
It is melting ice. It was always melting ice. We need to maintain perspective on how much BC there is and what our contribution is. When we shifted from burning damp wood to coal, the BC emissions dropped, but the OC emissions dropped much more. It is important to maintain a bird’s eye view of the whole equation or one can be quickly led into dead-end discussions. There is no need to create ‘1984’ (a world that was perpetually at war) in order to burn fuels cleanly and efficiently.
@terry
>>…climate forcing by all black-carbon- rich sources becomes slightly negative (-0.06 W m-2 with 90% uncertainty bounds of -1.45 to +1.29 W m-2).”
>Key point from the abstract, overall net effect is zero.
This is in line with previous studies which showed the same thing, though the new information, carefully presented so as not to offend, but still there, is that the models have been greatly underestimating the forcing by BC (by a factor of 3) and this must ultimately be subtracted from the forcing attributed to CO2. Be impressed they got that message into a major publication.
>Elsewhere, they indicate that BC from diesel is probably the only addressable positive forcing, something that has already been addressed in the developed world.
Well, diesel/fuel oil and heavy bunker oil. A very good point. It is not about ‘stopping all burning of everything’. It is about doing what engineers already try to do: burn the fuel properly and as fully as possible. You don’t have to ‘clean up’ combustion that is already clean. As I said above, BC particles are created by the combustor, not the fuel.
>While continuing to address BC and other particulates as “pollutants” and “probable health risks” can be justified, it’s impact on overall BC emissions and subsequent potential impact on AGW would appear minimal.
I would like to rephrase that slightly. That part of the total impact about which we can do something, over which we have substantial control, is minimal. The effect of BC is large, but most of it is counteracted by the OC that is co-emitted and most of it is not emitted by controllable sources. The area of savannah bured each year is gigantic.
Diesel and coal combustion are major sources of BC without a lot of co-emitted OC. What the total effect is can be calculated by comparing human-controllable net BC sources with the total. If it is small, then the big win for us is to reduce the obvious health impacts of people breathing smoke. If people want to toss money at a real problem, whether it changes the BC/OC ratio or not, that is fine be me. Those health impacts are real.
There is no technical reason poor people have to burn their free (or not) fuels badly. The right information is just badly shared, not available or metered through information choke points (organisations) trying to extract benefit as they ‘assist the poor’. We can’t be too surprised by that. I favour broad, free dissemination. See http://www.bioenergylists.org s4group.org http://www.drtlud.com/ http://www.newdawnengineering.com/website/library/ among many other popular websources: http://www.hedon.info/tiki-index.php, http://www.appropedia.org/ etc. There is not excuse not to get the engineering right.
Well I’m not silly enough to not think that soot has some effect on the weather, although the headline chooses to say climate instead of weather. I doubt that a soot particle survives in the atmosphere for 30 years or more.
However, the first cartoon picture, ceretainly does show numerous ways soot can influence things.
The first two I noticed, are that soot absorbs solar energy, and warms the atmosphere, but cools the surface. They made a typo and spelled “cooling” incorrectly as “dimming”. That is direct solar spectrum radiant energy that never makes it to the ocean depths, or to the land. So I’ll take that as a net cooling effect; less solar energy stored on earth.
Then there was the reference to “nucleation”, whereby soot, or black carbon, or pink dust, or other colored particles, result in water droplet formation; even microbes, although I don’t know what color they are.
So water droplet formation means local deposit of latent heat of condensation, and maybe of freezing as well, about 539 (+80) calories per gram of water droplet formation. Then the clouds that are formed, scatter and backscatter, more solar spectrum radiation, and block additional amounts from reaching the surface by warming the cloud. So that too counts as an atmospheric warming and surface dimming/cooling/whatever effect.
I’m still searching for the global warming component of black cabon aka soot/dust. I’ll get back to you when I find it. As for melt water, which is highly absorbent at LWIR wavelengths, it makes a better near black body radiator of LWIR than does snow, leading to faster cooling in the arctic. Remember the record ocean ice melting of 2007, which was followed by the fastest refreeze in recent memory, because of that faster radiation from open water.
So I get the weather change from soot; just don’t see where the global warming comes from; those soot particles on the ground would radiate better than the ice too, wouldn’t they ?
And keep up the good work Svend, I constantly look for your arctic inputs.
Climate Ace says:
My proposition was that BAU boosters do not include the true costs of fossil fuels when doing their calculations about so-called ‘cheap’ energy because they omit costs such as particulate-related premature deaths, the costs of tens of millions of chronic respiratory conditions
You have, deliberately or otherwise, completely reversed the point I made, which is coal fired powered stations have, and will assuming they are continued to be built, saved large numbers of lives, from chronic respiratory diseases. Based on the numbers from China, we are likely talking of millions of lives saved. If this is ‘business as usual’, then we need much more as soon as possible.
Tropical soils are often nutirent poor. If you simply remove the jungle without burning in place you will get poorer yields. SE Asia’s famous “haze” is the result.
The main source of the SE Asian haze is fires in drained peat bogs. These bogs are drained to create agricultural land often for growing palm oil for biofuels.
We can add this to the list of unintended adverse consequences from AGW mitigations.
I wouldn’t come to a conclusion before further investigation, but about all other environmental topics (including CO2 forcing, sea level rise, temperature increase, nuclear radiation, and about everything else) are dominated by the top fallacy of qualitative partial truth mixed with not neglecting opportunities to indulge in quantitative exaggeration, so one should be careful in making a jump from “soot causes warming” to assuming “soot causes the claimed amount of warming as a global average.” With that said, though there isn’t room for a large net AGW warming effect beyond local UHI and local land use change, if about any (after looking at non-fudged temperature history such as http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif and deducting natural forcings), the fact that Earth has a low climate sensitivity in reality means a figure substantial in W/m^2 terms may be more potentially plausible than would otherwise be the case.
While the (northern) arctic would be a separate topic, albeit commented on in a moment, one thing is particularly blatant: Soot is not the dominant cause of warming around Antarctica. If soot was, the land (ice) would warm more than oceans, since soot can darken ice/snow more so than oceans (where soot would soon get mixed into quadrillions of tons of deep water). Instead, for instance, during the 1982-2004 period, which was a time of warming for the oceans around Antarctica, the land (ice) very strikingly cooled, even when just a small number of miles from the oceans, as seen in an illustration towards the bottom right within http://s10.postimage.org/l9gokvp09/composite.jpg (click to enlarge).
What does more contribute to explaining such is cloud cover change (as in http://s13.postimage.org/ka0rmuwgn/gcrclouds.gif ), since the Antarctic ice is so white as to be whiter than clouds, unlike dark blue oceans, meaning that a reduction in clouds cools Antarctica while warming the surrounding ocean. The deviation in Antarctic temperature trends occurred long before CFCs and the late 20th century “ozone hole,” as seen in http://www.space.dtu.dk/upload/institutter/space/forskning/05_afdelinger/sun-climate/full_text_publications/svensmark_2007cosmoclimatology.pdf (though perhaps ozone change as well could have contributed more in earlier pre-CFC history if ozone change was more heavily driven by solar variation and far less quantitatively dominated by manmade CFCs than environmental activists tend to imply).
Also, while soot presumably can have some effect, the pattern of temperature history does not fit it being a dominant forcing at the northern end of the planet either: As illustrated by http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif , there was major arctic cooling during the 1940s-1960s,* and that was a time of growth in global soot-releasing combustion including in Asia. What does more fit such by far is seen in the bottom left of http://s10.postimage.org/l9gokvp09/composite.jpg
* Also note, as http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/ArcticIce/Images/arctic_temp_trends_rt.gif shows, arctic temperatures were no warmer in the 1990s than in the late 1930s, which fits how the late 20th century was not very special for arctic ice extent in the history seen in http://nwpi.krc.karelia.ru/e/climas/Ice/Ice_no_sat/XX_Arctic.htm ,and, as an annual average without cherry-picking a single month alone, arctic extent in the years recent to now (2013) has been comparable to that in the mid-1990s ( http://www.webcitation.org/6AKKakUIo ).
Not to mention that it is crazy to seek respite from the hugely desirable warming trend, which will, as usual, benefit all of mankind and civilization. Warming => More Life; Cooling => More Death. Pick one.