Schwarzer Peter für den Russ
Alles redet von CO2 als Ursache für die Klimaerwärmung. Aber: Der Russ spielt überraschenderweise mit – und zwar mit massivem Einfluss. Drei Viertel des Russes in Kaliforniens Luft stammt aus Asien, vor allem Indien und China, haben Forscher herausgefunden. Und wahrscheinlich haben noch ganz andere Faktoren, von denen wir noch gar nichts wissen, Einfluss auf unser Klima. Trotzdem: In der Schweiz und in Europa versucht man mit religiösem Eifer Einfluss auf das globale Klima zu nehmen…
Most of the soot and other particulate pollutants over the US West Coast comes from Asian countries like India and China, according to a new study.
More than three-quarters of black carbon transported at high altitudes in the spring over the West Coast comes from Asian sources, according to a research team led by an Indian American scientist V. Ramanathan of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. The pollutant, mainly soot, carries consequences for the Pacific Ocean region that drives much of the Earth’s climate. Asia generates more than 75 percent of black carbon. Though black carbon is an extremely small component of air pollution at land surface levels, the phenomenon has a significant heating effect on the atmosphere at altitudes above two kilometres.
As the soot heats the atmosphere, however, it also dims the surface of the ocean by absorbing solar radiation, according to Ramanathan and Odelle Hadley, who are co-authors of a research paper which appeared in the March 14 issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research. “The soot heating of the atmosphere exceeds the surface dimming and as a result the long range transported soot amplifies the global warming due to increase in carbon dioxide,” Ramanathan said. “We have to find out if this amplification is just restricted to spring time or is happening throughout the year.” Transport of Asian black carbon, particulate pollution generated by automobile exhaust, agricultural burning and other sources, is heaviest in spring when cold Arctic fronts dip to lower latitudes and loft warmer air to higher levels in the atmosphere. Black carbon concentrations diminish as they move farther away from their sources in cities and farmlands in countries such as China and India, said Ramanathan. However, over the Pacific Ocean, the particles are in sufficient concentration to have a heating effect on the upper atmosphere, a prediction based on output from computer models. On a regional level, that amount of heating, or positive radiative heating, that the black carbon causes in the skies over the Pacific is about 40 percent of the forcing that has been attributed to the carbon dioxide increase of the last century, said Ramanathan. “It was a major surprise. When we came up with the preliminary results, we had to check it and recheck it,” he said.
Quelle: Organisation of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (http://www.oananews.com)
