Finally a cure for Global Warming this should make them happy
Posted on 07/23/2008 3:58:59 AM PDT by gusopol3
The Arctic may get some temporary relief from global warming if the annual North American wildfire season intensifies, according to a new study by researchers at the University of Colorado and NOAA.
Smoke transported to the Arctic from northern forest fires may cool the surface for several weeks to months at a time, according to the most detailed analysis yet of how smoke influences the Arctic climate relative to the amount of snow and ice cover.
"Smoke in the atmosphere temporarily reduces the amount of solar radiation reaching the surface. This transitory effect could partly offset some of the warming caused by the buildup of greenhouse gases and other pollutants," said Robert Stone, an atmospheric scientist with the university and NOAA Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) and lead author of the study, which appears this week in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
How much solar energy is prevented from reaching the surface depends on the smoke's opacity, the elevation of the sun above the horizon, and the brightness of the surface, according to the study.
Stone and his research colleagues analyzed the short-term climate impact of numerous wildfires that swept through Alaska and western Canada in 2004. That summer, fires burned a record 10,000 square miles of Alaska's interior and another 12,000 square miles in western Canada.
A NOAA climate observatory near Barrow, Alaska, provided the data for the study. Smoke observed at Barrow was so thick that at times visibility dropped to just over one mile. The aerosol optical depth (AOD), a measure of the total absorption and scattering of solar radiation by smoke particles, rose a hundredfold from typical summer values.
Smoke in the atmosphere tends to cool the snow-free tundra while warming the smoke layer itself, the authors found. Smoke has an even greater cooling effect over the darker, ice-free ocean and less over bright snow.
"The heating of the smoke layer and cooling of the surface can lead to increased atmospheric stability, which in turn may keep clouds from forming," said Stone. "We think that this influence of smoke aerosol on clouds further affects the balance of radiation reaching the surface in the Arctic."
Research observatories as far away as Greenland and the Svalbard archipelago north of Norway also recorded elevated AOD values over several weeks during the 2004 summer, suggesting that the climate footprint of the North American wildfires was far-reaching. Smoke from the same fires also was observed as far south as the Gulf of Mexico.
To conduct their analysis, Stone and colleagues looked at how a range of smoky conditions might change the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface. Models showed that the cooling caused by future forest fires would depend on the severity of the fire season and on the geographic dispersion of smoke.
The authors cautioned, however, that the full climate impact of Arctic aerosols, including smoke particles, is still not entirely clear. For one thing, smoke particles captured within clouds or deposited on snow may change the brightness of these objects, further affecting the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the surface.
Also, aerosols such as smoke affect the absorption and scattering not only of solar radiation, but also of longwave or thermal radiation within the atmosphere. The impact of aerosols on longwave radiation, which dominates at night and during the long, dark winter season in the Arctic, has yet to be quantified.
NOAA understands and predicts changes in the Earth's environment, from the depths of the ocean to the surface of the sun, and conserves and manages our coastal and marine resources.
Cool. Setting fire to things prevents Global Warming.
Truly, there is no way to disprove AGW.
lol. Quick, somebody shoot Smokey the Bear.
It’s amazing how much BS they can dream up and attribute to it qualities of a global warming effect.
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=07&fd=22&fy=2007&sm=07&sd=22&sy=2008
When is the state of California going to be fined for releasing all those hydrocarbons into the atmosphere? The state has failed to take preventive measures to limit/remove fuel that allowed the fires to be stated by a lightening strike. The state has failed to extinguish the fires in a timely manner.
Something needs to be done! The land of fruits and nuts must pay for this outrage.
;>)
Finally a cure for Global Warming this should make them happy
Less Ice = Global Warming!
More Ice = Global Warming!
Now we need a study to show that if the amount of ice stays exactly the same, it is because of Global Warming. Then we will have all the bases covered...
get yourself a grant!
hey, you just let us worry about things up here at our end of the planet. You’ve got that guy that wants to turn the sky yellow with sulfur gas.
Idiots. Anyone who has ever lived up North knows that cloud cover/overcast conditions result in WARMER winter temps, not colder ones. The cloud cover prevents rapid heat loss during the night by trapping warm air beneath the cloud cover.
These bafoons think daytime sun warms up the snow? It warms the air. Snow reflects sunlight.
In typical backwards thinking, they think cloudy overcast skies prevent the sun from heating the snow covered earth.
Imagine how much 'gore bull warming' co2 that released. You'd think just from this massive release alone, that the earth would have melted completely.
p.s. here’s the South Pole —we are doing very well done here! http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/antarctic.jpg
No such luck. It hasn't got warm enough to start melting this year.
Seriously, I spend a lot of time up north and it is yet again colder than normal. There is no doubt it will be an early freeze up again.
Hell, if it weren’t for the Mexican agricultural fires every spring, it might be 115 in the shade here in Texas.
The reduction of smog in the cities caused global warming? Oh my.
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