Governments could slow global warming dramatically, and buy time to avert disastrous climate change, by slashing emissions of one of humanity's most familiar pollutants soot according to NASA scientists. A study by the space agency shows that cutting down on the pollutant can have an immediate cooling effect and prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths from air pollution at the same time.
Governments could slow global warming dramatically, and buy time to avert disastrous climate change, by slashing emissions of one of humanity's most familiar pollutants soot according to NASA scientists.
A study by the space agency shows that cutting down on the pollutant can have an immediate cooling effect and prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths from air pollution at the same time.
At the beginning of the make-or-break year in international attempts to negotiate a treaty to replace the Kyoto protocol, the soot removal proposal offers hope of a rapid new way of tackling global warming.
Governments have long experience in acting against soot.
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Cutting its emissions has a virtually instantaneous effect, because it rapidly falls out of the atmosphere, unlike carbon dioxide which remains there for over 100 years. And because soot is one of the worst killers among all pollutants, radical reductions save lives and so should command popular and political support.
The study from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and published in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics concludes that tackling the pollution provides ''substantial benefits for air quality while simultaneously contributing to climate change mitigation'' and ''may present a unique opportunity to engage parties and nations not yet fully committed to climate change mitigation for its own sake''.
Black carbon, the component of soot that gives it its colour, is thought to be the second-largest cause of global warming after carbon dioxide. Formed through incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, wood and vegetation, it delivers a double whammy.
While in the air, it is spread around the globe by the wind, and helps to heat the atmosphere by absorbing and releasing solar radiation. And when it falls, it darkens snow and ice, at the poles or high in mountains, reducing its ability to reflect sunlight.
As a result, it melts more quickly, and exposes more dark land or water which absorbs even more energy, and so increases warming.
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