Climate Studies to Benefit from 12 Years of Satellite Aerosol Data
Desert dust blown from the Western Sahara towards the Canary Islands, seen in this 300-m resolution Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MERIS) image. The wind can move between 60 and 200 million tonnes of fine dust up from the Sahara each year. (ESA)
Aerosols, very small particles suspended in the air, play an important role in the global climate balance and in regulating climate change. They are one of the greatest sources of uncertainty in climate change models. ESA’s GlobAerosol project has been making the most of European satellite capabilities to monitor them.
Using data from the Along Track Scanning Radiometer-2 on the ERS-2 satellite, the Advanced Along Track Scanning Radiometer and the Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer on Envisat and the Spinning Enhanced Visible & InfraRed Imager (SEVIRI) instrument on the Meteosat Second Generation, GlobAerosol has produced a global aerosol dataset going back to 1995. The full dataset is available on the GlobAerosol website.
Some aerosols occur naturally, originating from sea-spray, wind-blown dust, volcanic eruptions and biochemical emissions from oceans and forests, while others are produced through emissions from industrial pollution, fossil-fuel burning, man-made forest fires and agriculture. (more…)
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Interactions with Aerosols Boost Warming Potential of Some Gases
By Adam Voiland
This map shows the distribution of methane at the surface. New research shows that methane has an elevated warming effect due to its interactions with other substances in the atmosphere. (NASA/Goddard)
For decades, climate scientists have worked to identify and measure key substances — notably greenhouse gases and aerosol particles — that affect Earth’s climate. And they’ve been aided by ever more sophisticated computer models that make estimating the relative impact of each type of pollutant more reliable.
Yet the complexity of nature — and the models used to quantify it — continues to serve up surprises. The most recent? Certain gases that cause warming are so closely linked with the production of aerosols that the emissions of one type of pollutant can indirectly affect the quantity of the other. And for two key gases that cause warming, these so-called “gas-aerosol interactions” can amplify their impact. (more…)
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Do Dust Particles Curb Climate Change?
Every cloud is different from the next. It is therefore important to study the types of cloud systems in which aerosols have the greatest influence. (Max Planck Institute for Meteorology / Stevens)
A knowledge gap exists in the area of climate research: for decades, scientists have been asking themselves whether, and to what extent man-made aerosols, that is, dust particles suspended in the atmosphere, enlarge the cloud cover and thus curb climate warming. Research has made little or no progress on this issue. Two scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg (MPI-M) and the American National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) report in the journal Nature that the interaction between aerosols, clouds and precipitation is strongly dependent on factors that have not been adequately researched up to now. They urge the adoption of a research concept that will close this gap in the knowledge. (Nature, October 1st, 2009)
Greenhouse gases that heat up the earth’s atmosphere have their adversaries: dust particles suspended in the atmosphere which are known as aerosols. They arise naturally, for example when wind blows up desert dust, and through human activities. A large proportion of the man-made aerosols arise from sulfur dioxides that are generated, in turn, by the combustion of fossil fuels. (more…)
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Man-Made Activities Affect Blue Haze
“Blue haze,” a common occurrence that appears over heavily forested areas around the world, is formed by natural emissions of chemicals, but human activities can worsen it to the point of affecting the world’s weather and even cause potential climate problems, according to a study led by a Texas A&M University researcher.
Renyi Zhang, professor of atmospheric sciences who has studied air chemistry for more than 20 years, says blue haze (tiny particles or aerosols suspended in the air) can be negatively affected by human activities such as power plants or fossil-fuel burning.
Team members included researchers from Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York, the Molina Center for Energy and Environment in La Jolla, Calif., and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Their work is published in the current Proceedings of the National Academy of Science and the project was funded by the Welch Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. (more…)
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New Research: The Impact of Regional Aerosols in China
Zhanging Li is a professor in the University of Maryland's Dept. of Atmospheric and Oceanic Science (CMPS).
Moisture-laden clouds frequently gather over the heavy industrial regions of southeastern China, yet little rainfall is recorded there. A University of Maryland scientist, working with climate experts from NASA, the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, discovered one reason may be in a component of those clouds: aerosols.
A heavy concentration of aerosols — tiny airborne particles of soot, dust, sulfuric acid and organic matter — can affect rainfall, air quality and the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface, according to the researchers. Their initial findings from a seven-month study are featured in an article published this week (Sept. 24) in Nature magazine.
“To better understand the impact of aerosols in China is to better understand climate change worldwide,” says Zhanqing Li, a professor of atmospheric and oceanic science (CMPS) at Maryland and lead investigator of the project. (more…)
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Aerosols May Drive a Significant Portion of Arctic Warming
By Adam Voiland
Aerosols can influence climate directly by either reflecting or absorbing the sun's radiation as it moves through the atmosphere. The tiny airborne particles enter the atmosphere from sources such as industrial pollution, volcanoes and residential cooking stoves. Credit: NASA Goddard's Scientific Visualization Studio
Though greenhouse gases are invariably at the center of discussions about global climate change, new NASA research suggests that much of the atmospheric warming observed in the Arctic since 1976 may be due to changes in tiny airborne particles called aerosols.
Emitted by natural and human sources, aerosols can directly influence climate by reflecting or absorbing the sun’s radiation. The small particles also affect climate indirectly by seeding clouds and changing cloud properties, such as reflectivity. (more…)
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