Fossil fuel combustion is the main contributor to black carbon collected at five sites around the Arctic, which has implications for global warming, according to a study by an international group of scientists that included a team from Baylor University.
Fossil fuel combustion is the main contributor to black carbon collected at five sites around the Arctic, which has implications for global warming, according to a study by an international group of scientists that included a team from Baylor University.
The five-year study to uncover sources of black carbon was done at five remote sites around the Arctic and is published in the premier journal Science Advances, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
The Baylor team used radiocarbon to determine fossil and biomass burning contributions to black carbon in Barrow, Alaska, while their collaborators used the same technique for sites in Russia, Canada, Sweden and Norway.
Baylor research was led by Rebecca Sheesley, Ph.D., associate professor of environmental science in the College of Arts & Sciences, and Tate Barrett, Ph.D., former student of Sheesley and now a postdoctoral scholar at the University of North Texas. Their interest in the research resulted from a desire to understand why the Arctic is changing and what pollutants should be controlled to mitigate that change.
Read more at Baylor University
Image: Rebecca Sheesley, Ph.D., associate professor of environmental science at Baylor University and member of international team studying why the Arctic is changing and what pollutants should be controlled to mitigate that change. (Credit: Robert Rogers of Baylor University)
