Plumes of arctic haze traced to Russia, Kazakhstan

Data gathered by a NOAA aircraft over northern Alaska and the Arctic Ocean in April 2008 indicate that forest fires in Russia and agricultural burning in Kazakhstan may substantially contribute to springtime plumes of dirty air known as arctic haze (note the dark stripe of smoky air above and beyond the NASA plane shown in this image).Credit: J. Cozic/CIRES/NOAA Chemical Sciences Division

Data gathered by aircraft flying over northern Alaska and the Arctic Ocean in April 2008 hint that many springtime plumes of arctic haze in the region,

This is a well written and objective report -- until the last paragraph. Prior to that we read

Not one of the plumes detected during the April 2008 flights was tracked back to industrial sources. “That was certainly a surprise,” Brock [Charles A. Brock, an atmospheric physicist at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colo.] says. “We were expecting more anthropogenic plumes.” However, he notes, some of the plumes did contain higher-than-expected concentrations of carbon monoxide — a sign that the air was tainted by industrial emissions before it reached the area where the fire added smoke.

Brock is from NOAA, but apparently this research didn't go over well with the NASA folks. Recall that militant activist James Hansen of NASA who, believes that civil disobedience is necessary to combat "climate change" and/or "global warming" is an outspoken (to put it mildly) critic of capitalist corporations who spew massive amounts of soot and pollution into the atmosphere and must be shut down by whatever means necessary.

So the last paragraph of this article totally contradicts the findings of NOAA and Dr. Rick Shetter, an atmospheric scientist at the University of North Dakota’s National Suborbital Education and Research Center in Grand Forks.

My bets are on NOAA and Rick Shetter for who has presented the most convincing case.

NASA is trying to at least discredit it:

Also during April 2008, NASA aircraft were conducting similar air-sampling missions out of Fairbanks, some of which extended across northern Canada to Greenland. During those flights — at least 20 in all — scientists detected plumes of polluted air that could be tracked back to Europe, North America and Asia, says James H. Crawford, an atmospheric scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. Some of the plumes that the NASA aircraft flew through originated in fires. But the largest sources of arctic pollutants — those that taint the vast volumes of air outside those plumes — are industrial emissions generated throughout the Northern Hemisphere.

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