Study traces black carbon sources in the Russian Arctic
From the INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR APPLIED SYSTEMS ANALYSIS
According to a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 35% of black carbon in the Russian Arctic originates from residential heating sources, 38% comes from transport, while open fires, power plants, and gas flaring are responsible for only 12%, 9%, and 6% respectively. These estimates confirm previous work for some areas of the European Arctic, but for Siberia, the findings differ from previous research, which had suggested that contribution from gas flaring were much higher.
Black carbon, or soot, increases snow and ice melt by dulling the reflective surface and increasing the absorption of sunlight. Researchers say this is one reason that Arctic regions have warmed faster than any other area on the planet, with average temperatures there today over 4°C higher than the 1968-1996 average, according to the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). Black carbon may also be contributing to the steep decline in summer Arctic sea ice coverage in recent decades.
“Reducing black carbon pollution holds some potential for climate change mitigation, especially in the Arctic, but in order to take effective action, we have to know where it is coming from. This study provides better data, but also shows that we need more information about source structure and spatial distribution of pollution in the Arctic,” explains IIASA researcher Zbigniew Klimont, who worked on the study.
The location of black carbon emissions matters, explains Klimont, because black carbon emitted from the sources closer to the Arctic leads to greater warming (per unit of emitted black carbon) compared to sources further from the region. “High-latitude sources are especially important. Even though China, for example, releases much more black carbon than Arctic regions, reductions there have less impact per kilogram than reductions in the Arctic.”
This research drew on IIASA research that was part of a European-Union funded project, Evaluating the Climate and Air Quality Impacts of Short-lived Pollutants (ECLIPSE). Researchers used the ECLIPSE emissions and an atmospheric transport model and compared the predictions with measurements and carbon isotope analysis of samples at Arctic research stations. While the study found good agreement between model estimates of black carbon concentrations and measurements for the European Arctic site, they found a mismatch between the modeled and measured results for the Russian Arctic site. The researchers developed a better method to attribute pollution to its sources by incorporating new data from Tiksi, a research station in the far eastern region of Siberia into the model. This improved attribution highlights the more important role of residential heating and transport sources while lesser relevance of gas flaring at this far-East Siberian site.
“There is widespread gas flaring in the Russian Arctic. Yet, the magnitude of gas flaring related black carbon and other combustion related emissions and the specific carbon-isotopic fingerprint are not very well understood. In order to better assess the role of black carbon pollution in the Arctic and to target its sources for mitigation, we need to measure the isotopic fingerprint of the gas flaring sources,” says Patrik Winiger, a researcher at Stockholm University in Sweden who led the study.
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Reference
Winiger P, Andersson A, Stohl A, Semiletov IP, Dudarev OV, Charkin A, Shakhova N, Klimont Z, Heyes C, Gustafsson O (2017). Siberian Arctic black carbon sources constrained by model and observation PNAS. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.1613401114
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A Russian under every bed melting ice and hacking elections. Lol.
I know I’m quibbling about terminology, but isn’t all carbon black except for diamonds and graphite? Why be redundant and call it black carbon? Do you really think anyone would think you were talking about diamonds or graphite? And another thing while I’m at it. Please quit calling CO2 carbon. Its stupid. Should we call water hydrogen? Science today is broken
I know the answer.
It was the scientist, in the office, with a computer model.
No mention of massive Russian forest fires, as well as controlled burns of forestry in Finland Sweden ect.
Said Nordic nations also burn waste for energy, everywhere has energy waste bins. So mass incineration of rubbish certainly adds to it.
though one might imagine that concentration of black carbon is more or less relative to the amount of ice. A natural declining of ice over decades would have some effect on concentrating black carbon in remaining ice.
In my opinion it’s another junk scare
Yes, we should mention the Russian forest fires of 2010, 2013, 14, 15… and 16
Which have followed record heatwaves and severe droughts…
These are clear evidence of climate change.
Griff
the climate has always been changing
there are also specific reasons as to why the climate changes
to do with the variation of energy coming in [from outside] and localized more warming in the NH to do with the re-alignment of earth’s inner liquid iron core – which moves around like a magnetic stirrer – if you know what that is.
Check out how the magnetic north pole has changed in the last 100 years and give me report back on what you think about that? Then go down with me 1km into a gold mine here and realize how big the elephant in the room really is…
If the climate did not change regularly you and I would not be alive today.
The climate changes declare the greatness of God.
Clear evidence that Griff does not what clear evidence is.
One of the best job I ever had in the nuclear industry was doing root cause analysis (RCA). The idea is that if you fix the root cause of a problem it will not occur again.
One of the rules is you can not blame weather or nature. If you have a car accident when it is raining. It could be that you have not been properly trained to slow down when it is raining.
Records are only evidence of record keeping. Heat waves, droughts, and fires are part of nature.
It would be interesting pictures from 100,000 years to see what things were like before man’s influence.
M. Courtney,
Extremely stupid statements like the above are why Griffie gets the abuse that he does.
Like the MASSIVE FREEZING they are currently experiencing, hey griff.
Juts keep making up sci-fantasy, little troll.
Everybody is laughing at your idiocy 🙂
I stand to be corrected but I remember back in the 50s and 60s most of the homes (at least where I live) were heated by either coal or sawdust. Wouldn’t they put a lot of “soot” into the atmosphere and if the article is correct the 50s and 60s should have seen a lot of arctic ice loss, even more than today.
Didn’t we used to call this “dirty snow”?
There are few if any thermometers in the Arctic. NOAA extrapolates temperatures from thermometers 1200 km apart. If the average temperature of the Arctic did or did not rise 4 degrees, no one would know one way or the other. Drilling for oil is good, resultant natural gas too far away from markets to build a pipeline is a necessary evil, so be it…
Good point. So much “data” is not really data but estimates that can never be verified.
Climate issues aside, I just think black carbon on ice is ugly. It messes up the scenery.
… similar argument about tobacco smoking. It’s ugly, it stinks, and it makes a person look so needy.
… speaking as an artist here, … aesthetics and all that crap.
I’ve been in small villages in central Siberia where the major source of heating is from coal fired stoves. Going to central Siberia isn’t like going to the midwest in the United States. We have a solid infrastructure in the midwest, and although I’ve seen coal fired stoves in older homes, I’ve never seen one actively used in my lifetime, although it’s possible some still heat their homes with coal. In some of the areas I’ve visited in central Siberia, there is very little infrastructure and nearly everyone heats their homes with coal. The fix for this would be for Russia to build out a better, wider ranging infrastructure. At the same time, I don’t think people have a true sense of scale when it comes to how large of an area Siberia actually is. Even with vast oil wealth, I imagine it would bankrupt Russia to complete this kind of project. It just doesn’t seem feasible in the near future. That means people either freeze to death or we find some other way to mitigate or adapt to black carbon.
Joz
I actually doubt that it is the soot from burning coal that causes the arctic melt. so, most probably there is nothing to fix….
just google how much the magnetic north pole has shifted north east over the past 100 years alone.
then take a lift 1 km into a gold mine here [in South Africa]
and you will realize how big the elephant in the room really is…
btw
it is cooling here [in southern Africa]
HenryP,
We can quickly warm you South Africans up with a cup and a half of homogenisation.
“I imagine it would bankrupt Russia to complete this kind of project.”
I have read reports that one of the biggest drains on the Soviet economy was the effort to provide some infrastructure for Siberia. Even for the entire economy of the world it would be about as feasible as turning all central Australia into watercress farms.
(Pssst: “How large an area”. “Of” not needed.)
More efficient stoves might help. Probably cost a lot less than thousands of miles of nat. gas pipelines.
More efficient stoves would also mean less coal is needed for the same amount of heat.
Soot. Now that’s real carbon pollution.
I could really get behind a campaign to reduce it. Perhaps we could campaign to introduce efficient coal fired power stations to these regions to generate electricity and reduce their reliance on wood and open fires.
Interesting that humans can’t warm the planet except if need be to stop a coming ice age. Is this magic?
Interesting how some humans are immune to sarcasm and have no sense of humour.
6 impossible things before breakfast can help improve your way.
Back in the 70’s, spreading carbon black on the ice to slow the growth of glaciers was discussed.
Pumping more CO2 into the atmosphere wasn’t. They knew something many have now forgotten.
” … was part of a European-Union funded project”
Can stop reading at that point. PNAS is one of the “Old Girls” clubs in D.C. and as anti-American as the E.U. i.e. the New German Empire.
As Patrick MJD pointed out above; this ‘new method’ is a model.
More finagling masquerading as science.
Curse those Russians! Is their anything they are not responsible for?
“Is THERE anything …”
(Damned predictive software destroying my reputation for grammatical precision mutter mutter grumble grumble must remember to edit before posting grouse gripe …)
Russian Hackers! That’s what it is. I now have a 47 page dossier saying that it might have been Russian hackers who inserted a superfluous “of” in Joz Jonlin’s comment just to draw me out, and then changed my comment. (Not actual proof, but I’m pretty sure it’s the sort of thing those evil Ruskies would do.)
No need to fall back on the predictive software excuse when I can blame it on the Russians.
“Griff
the climate has always been changing”
Henry is wrong! Have you ever seen the climate change? The only constant in nature is change. However, Henry is talking about a human concept. In the nuclear industry we have a concept called change management. It is hard to get people to change. Change has to be managed. I will get back to this.
I have lived places where they joke, if you do not like the weather, wait 15 minutes.
I am an old guy. I have not even observed a natural variation in our current climate.
There is no ‘Climate Change’. Maybe I am being too precise, or too general, or too simplistic. Climate change is simply a human theory about the future.
We are in an ice age. That is our climate. For the last 35 million years. About 65 million years ago we were clearly not in an ice age.
Statistically an ice age is not ‘normal’. That is to say, most the time our planet does not have ice at the polar caps or glaciers. There are some weak theories about the causes for this most ‘recent’ change.
I have a hard time taking anyone serious when predicting the future if they can not explain the past.
For the last million or so years, there has been a pattern of relative short periods of 20,000 years when glaciers are receding. Rapidly for 8,000 years and a semi-steady state of of glaciers receding and growing producing a constant slow rate of sea level rise. There are some interesting theories about this pattern too.
With geology recording climate change, there is no climate change.
While determining a good long term storage location for spent nuclear fuel, we ask geologist to rule out places that may not be good places in the future. For example, Handford might be ruled out by glaciers while glaciers do not extend to Yucca Mountain.
One thing is clear from the unwritten history. Unless there was some unidentified evolutionary change, mankind went from merely surviving to flourishing during this slightly warmer period in our ice age climate. One of the reasons is that we have been very good at adapting to seasonal variation in weather either by migration or building shelters.
The real problem facing mankind is what to do if we can not induce the climate to become warmer, when the glaciers start expanding again many of the places we live will not be very nice.
However, this is not climate change. No one human will observe it.
retired kid p
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/12/09/hockey-stick-observed-in-noaa-ice-core-data/
e.g. last graph reported there
seems to me like ice aces were more prominent when looked at it over the past 500000 years and the interglacial periods were sporadic and relative smallish time periods?
The ice age trap is that more ice being formed from year to year, reflects more energy, accelerating global cooling.
I figure that God has currently given man the power to stop the ice age trap if it were to come although the carbon soot idea might not be that effective. I would blow up the advancing ice with big bombs exploded below the ice?
///???
“I would blow up the advancing ice with big bombs exploded below the ice?”
I think Henry is still think about time on a human scale. The human race has experimented with big bombs with no apparent affect on climate or anything else for that matter.
Let’s say we vaporize advancing ice sheets with hydrogen bombs. What’s the plan do it every winter for 100,000 years?
Bases on my lifespan experience, there is enough real and immediate problems to keep busy.
Good for Russia. As solar quiesence starts bringing in the liklihood of global cooling (always a danger to runaway with growing snow and ice albedo feedback effects), the whole world is going to have to start getting dirty with the poles. … Ahem. Make that sooty. Sooty with the poles.
Russian military and economic policy is based on a there being a warming arctic…
That must be why they are busy building more and bigger ice breakers.
Not reported in the article is that two of the main sources of fuel for power generation and domestic heating in Russia are peat and wood which despite being horribly dirty fuels are of course considered ‘renewables’ and thus its OK to ignore the black carbon particulates they emit.
So while fully decomposed wood (coal) is bad partly decomposed coal is apparently bad. Only in the weird world of CAGW does this make sense.
And there is no incentive for them to do anything about it. An ice free Arctic (at least seasonally ice free) would be just splendid for the Ruskis.