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OSLO, Sep. 18, 2012 (Reuters) — Local pollution in the Arctic from shipping and oil and gas industries, which have expanded in the region due to a thawing of sea ice caused by global warming, could further accelerate that thaw, experts say. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said there was an urgent need to calculate risks of local pollutants such as soot, or "black carbon", in the Arctic. Soot darkens ice, making it soak up more of the sun's heat and quickening a melt. Companies such as Shell, which this week gave up a push to find oil this...

Full TITLE: Shocker: The Hansen/GISS team paper that says: “we argue that rapid warming in recent decades has been driven mainly by non-CO2 greenhouse gases” Note: This will be a top post for a day or two, new stories will appear below this one – please scroll down. Also, If you have not already, vote in the WUWT Sea Ice Forecast Poll, which closes at noon today.============================================================No, this isn’t a joke, it isn’t a fake document, and it isn’t a misinterpretation. It is a paper published by Dr. James Hansen (and the GISS team) in PNAS (Proceedings of the National...

Particles cool down the climate, but to which extent? This has remained an unanswered question for scientists. A new article in Science by Gunnar Myhre at CICERO, Sweden, brings the scientific community a step closer to solving the mystery. There is large scientific agreement that human made emissions of CO2 and other gasses give global warming. But human activity doesn’t just cause gas emissions. Burning of fossil fuels and biomass also causes emissions of the particle black carbon. Other kinds of particles are formed in the atmosphere as a cause of human made emissions. Particles, also named aerosols, are today...

KOHLUA, India — “It’s hard to believe that this is what’s melting the glaciers,” said Dr. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, one of the world’s leading climate scientists, as he weaved through a warren of mud brick huts, each containing a mud cookstove pouring soot into the atmosphere. As women in ragged saris of a thousand hues bake bread and stew lentils in the early evening over fires fueled by twigs and dung, children cough from the dense smoke that fills their homes. Black grime coats the undersides of thatched roofs. At dawn, a brown cloud stretches over the landscape like a diaphanous...