We’ve had several essays here at WUWT on the role of Black Carbon soot and its role in affecting surface albedo. Anyone who has ever witnessed “dirty snow” knows that it tends to melt faster than white snow under sunlight because the black carbon on top absorbs more solar energy than the base white snow does. There’s even been some simple citizen science demonstrating this effect in your own back yard. Most of the western world’s industrialization has shifted to China due to environmental regulation, and as we know, China hasn’t paid much attention to pollution control as seen by the satellite photo at right and the many photos we’ve seen from the ground showing air pollution in China, for example, in Beijing.
While this paper is based on a modeling of black carbon interaction with the atmosphere and albedo, the premise is fairly straightforward, and wouldn’t likely have as many variables as many long term climate models. I think it is worth considering because unlike some long term climate models, we also have observational feedback that suggests black carbon is a real problem. The good news is that is a much easier problem to solve as conventional pollution control is a mature technology.
In the recently published Fahey et al, from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) where they did atmospheric sampling over a four year period, the lead author said, “This study confirms and goes beyond other research that suggested black carbon has a strong warming effect on climate, just ahead of methane.”
Then there was Lau et al from NASA, another modeling study which suggests that Soot is having a big impact on Himalyan temperature – as much or more than GHG’s
This new paper from Lee and Kim says similar things using different methods.
Radiative effect of black carbon aerosol on seasonal variation in snow depth in the Northern-Hemisphere
Abstract
In this research, we studied the effects of black carbon (BC) aerosol radiative forcing on seasonal variation in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) using numerical simulations with the NASA finite-volume General Circulation Model (fvGCM) forced with monthly varying three-dimensional aerosol distributions from the Goddard Ozone Chemistry Aerosol Radiation and Transport Model (GOCART). The results show that atmospheric warming due to black carbon aerosols subsequently warm the atmosphere and land surfaces, especially those over Eurasia. As a result, the snow depth in Eurasia was greatly reduced in late winter and spring, and the reduction in snow cover decreased the surface albedo. Our surface energy balance analysis shows that the surface warming due to aerosol absorption causes early snow melting and further increases surface-atmosphere warming through snow/ice albedo feedback. Therefore, BC aerosol forcing may be an important factor affecting the snow/ice albedo in the NH.
DOI 10.1007/s13143-013-0021-2
================================================================
Indeed, spring snow cover in Eurasia seems to be down markedly according to this plot from Rutgers Snow Lab:
Source: http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/chart_anom.php?ui_set=0&ui_region=eurasia&ui_month=2
I don’t have access to the new Lee and Kim paper, but I do have access to some stunning examples of black carbon existing where it should not, in Greenland:
Meltwater stream flowing into a large moulin in the ablation zone (area below the equilibrium line) of the Greenland ice sheet. (Image courtesy Roger J. Braithwaite, The University of Manchester, UK via GISS)
Of course images like this one at left showing water tumbling down a huge moulin are being held up with gloom and doom scenarios that say Greenland’s Ice is melting “faster than expected” and we’ll get six feet of sea level rise from it along with a 10-15°F temperature rise by the year 2100.
Perhaps. But, moulins have existed since Greenland had ice, they are just part of the natural landscape and processes. They aren’t “new” to our time.
One of the photos we don’t often get to see was also circulated in the email, by somebody who lives in Greenland and knows what this is really all about.
It’s a real eye opener:
Image from National Geographic online slide show – Photo: James Balog – click for moreHe writes:
In the winter a huge among of snow are accumulated on the Ice (2-3 meters, sometimes more) and we are not talking about 1 or 2 square-miles, it’s about 100.000′s of square miles (up to 1 million) on the Westside of the Ice cap and a similar picture on the Eastside… when the melting season starts in april-sep… the meltwater has to go somewhere, and for sure it goes downhill in huge meltwater rivers.
The black stuff on the bottom of the lakes is carbon dust and pollution in general… but not from one year, but several decades (the topographical conditions don’t change from year to year). On a flight over the Ice Cap a sky clear day, you can see hundreds of huge lakes with the black spot on the bottom.
Here in Kangerlussuaq, on the edge of the Ice Cap, we have several burst from edge-lake, all the water (millions of tonnes) in the river passing through the settlement in a day or two.
The Vikings (Eric the Red) is about Medieval warm period…. the Hockey-stick mystery!!!
Med venlig hilsen
Svend Erik Hendriksen
And in that same Nat Geo collection that the photo above came from, you can see this photo also:
From National Geographic: At the bottom of an ice canyon, cryoconite—fine brown and black dust carried by wind—spatters the edges of sutured crevasses, places where meltwater flooded massive cracks in the ice and then froze. Photo: James Balog
h/t to Dr. Roger Pielke Sr. for the Lee and Kim paper.
[UPDATE] I trust that Anthony won’t mind if I add some more information about black carbon, from the EPA.
The figure above shows the location of the sources of BC emissions globally.
Note the large differences between US and global sources. Domestic/residential, from the use of coal and wood for heating and cooking, is only 3.6% of the US emissions, but it is a full quarter of the global emissions. Going the other way, transport (mainly diesel vehicles) is more than half the US total, while it’s about a fifth of the global total.
Regards to all,
w.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
The BC Gigagrams world map shows clearl;y where th BC comes from: China, India, Malayasia and ex-Soviet-block Eastern Europe.
We all knew anout Chindia, but the last one is rather enlightening….
How many millions of tons of vehicle tires are ground down every year just by people driving. Some gets to the polar regions? Also this may be why as less people smoke, the amount of asthma still rises.
Just wondering.
@Manfred
“and you get an effective forcing of 3.3-8.8 W/m2 for the albedo effect on multi year ice, by far the highest anthropogenic forcing.”
I didn’t want to quote the whole of your first post though my comment relates to the whole thing. There is a basic error being made by Hansen et al with regard to the BC in multiyear ice. It is completely true that old ice contains more BC and dust than new ice, but it is completely untrue that it changes the albedo and forcing as much as is shown by the calculation. The calculation given (which is not yours it is a citation). The BC and dust accumulate steadily. Only if it melts does it appear as shown in the ice canyon photograph. They speak while mixing two unmixables: the mass of BC and the age of the ice, then the change in albedo of the ice (showing a picture of melted ice, not ice) and the mass of BC.
It has the air of scienciness but not so much truthiness. It only takes 1 cm of snow to turn 8 metres of dirty old ice completely white on top where it counts. When old ice melts the BC accumulates into a darker haze and solar absorbing layer, but the letter of the claim is that there is a change in the way the BC works all year’, basically. Consider that the claim is BC is a forcing (a constant forcing) because the ice ‘is dirtier that it was’ inside. But this forcing is only evident when the ice is actually melting which it was going to do anyway (because it is summer) so it melts a bit faster.
When the weather is cold, or turns cold again, then the ice would not melting because of heat, it is not sitting there ‘dirty in the sun’ because it has a layer of new snow over it.
This entire calculation of forcing is messed up with misconceptions and misdirections. Go stand on a frozen lake. Do you see lots of dirt on the top? No, it has to be melting before it ‘accumulates’ into a meaningful layer. Lots of forcing because it is black. If it gets cold again, it is quickly turned completely white on the top surface with a slighty dusting of frost or snow. End of the forcing abberation.
This albedo matter needs to be reanalysed from ground zero.
Willis Eschenbach says:
March 7, 2013 at 12:56 pm
Mike Smith says:
March 7, 2013 at 12:32 pm
… In any event, …
I’ve added an update with at least some of this information to the head post.
w.
Thanks for the update.
I noticed that the units of the Global and US EPA pie charts are different (not that that changes the shapes of the pies).
If I did my conversion correctly,
(0.64e+6 tons_UScontribution) * (9.0718e+5 grams per 1 US ton) / (1e+9 grams / Gg) gives
~580.6 Gg
for the US contribution (vs the 7600 Gg for the world)
Just providing an apples v apples comparison.
-OldUnixHead
Well, phoo on my last entry. Trying again to get the formatting right.
Thanks for the update.
I noticed that the units of the Global and US EPA pie charts are different (not that that changes the shapes of the pies).
If I did my conversion correctly,
(0.64e+6 tons_UScontribution) * (9.0718e+5 grams per 1 US ton) / (1e+9 grams / Gg) gives
~580.6 Gg
for the US contribution (vs the 7600 Gg for the world)
Just providing an apples v apples comparison.
-OldUnixHead
Steven Mosher says:
March 7, 2013 at 10:57 am
=============================
Sad to see a man turn into a mocking troll, casting out general strawman attacks in a mocking manner. Do you understand that those who do not accept the C in CAGW are a very diverse group? They, are everybody else. Stop your nonsense. Feel free to say that, I note how some here are sceptical of models if they disagree, but not if they support their asssertion. That is ok to say, but really still quite mindless, as the reasons behingd that may vary from much greater understanding, to prejudice on the individual.
You have been well answered in several posts, but, as usual, I suspect you will not engage in actual conversation. Also, please consider that particulates do not increase the worlds food supply while reducing our water use, a known affect of CO2, without which we would all die.
I believe there’s a correlation between Mao’s Great Leap Forward in 1959 to industrialize China in 5 years…to prove that superior Communism could out-compete the Free World…and the slow melting of the polar ice from loss of albedo. Chinese soot has been found on polar snow and tundra vegetation. The burning of soft dirty coal in inefficient power plants and backyard iron furnaces form the infamous Asian Brown Cloud that has been seen over NJ by NASA satellites. The peasant farmers melted down their cookware and farming tools and burned their huts in the primitive furnaces under the guns of the Red Guard. It resulted in the man-made famine that starved 45 million people to death.