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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...

Feature Aerosols May Drive a Significant Portion of Arctic Warming 04.08.09     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> Larger image 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....