Soot climate forcing via snow and ice albedos
James Hansen,Larissa Nazarenko +1 more
TLDR
Reducing soot emissions, thus restoring snow albedos to pristine high values, would have the double benefit of reducing global warming and raising the global temperature level at which dangerous anthropogenic interference occurs.Abstract:
Plausible estimates for the effect of soot on snow and ice albedos (1.5% in the Arctic and 3% in Northern Hemisphere land areas) yield a climate forcing of +0.3 W/m2 in the Northern Hemisphere. The “efficacy” of this forcing is ∼2, i.e., for a given forcing it is twice as effective as CO2 in altering global surface air temperature. This indirect soot forcing may have contributed to global warming of the past century, including the trend toward early springs in the Northern Hemisphere, thinning Arctic sea ice, and melting land ice and permafrost. If, as we suggest, melting ice and sea level rise define the level of dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, then reducing soot emissions, thus restoring snow albedos to pristine high values, would have the double benefit of reducing global warming and raising the global temperature level at which dangerous anthropogenic interference occurs. However, soot contributions to climate change do not alter the conclusion that anthropogenic greenhouse gases have been the main cause of recent global warming and will be the predominant climate forcing in the future.read more
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Book Chapter
Changes in Atmospheric Constituents and in Radiative Forcing
Piers M. Forster,Venkatachalam Ramaswamy,Paulo Artaxo,Terje Koren Berntsen,Richard Betts,David W. Fahey,Jim Haywood,Judith Lean,David C. Lowe,Gunnar Myhre,John Nganga,Ronald G. Prinn,Graciela B. Raga,Michael Schulz,Rob van Dorland,Greg Bodeker,Oliver Boucher,William D. Collins,T.J. Conway,Edward J. Dlugokencky,James W. Elkins,David Etheridge,P. Foukal,Paul J. Fraser,Marvyn Geller,Fortunat Joos,Charles D. Keeling,Stefan Kinne,K. Lassey,Ulrike Lohmann,Andrew C. Manning,S. A. Montzka,David E. Oram,K. O'Shaughnessy,S. Piper,Gian-Kasper Plattner,Michael Ponater,Navin Ramankutty,G. Reid,David Rind,Karen H. Rosenlof,Robert Sausen,D. Schwarzkopf,S.K. Solanki,Garry Stenchikov,N. Stuber,Toshihiko Takemura,Christiane Textor,R. Wang,Ray F. Weiss,T. Whorf +50 more
Journal ArticleDOI
Bounding the role of black carbon in the climate system: A scientific assessment
Tami C. Bond,Sarah J. Doherty,David W. Fahey,Piers M. Forster,Terje Koren Berntsen,Benjamin DeAngelo,Mark Flanner,Steven J. Ghan,Bernd Kärcher,Dorothy Koch,Stefan Kinne,Yutaka Kondo,Patricia K. Quinn,Marcus C. Sarofim,Martin G. Schultz,Michael Schulz,Chandra Venkataraman,Hua Zhang,Shiqiu Zhang,Nicolas Bellouin,Sarath K. Guttikunda,Philip K. Hopke,Mark Z. Jacobson,Johannes W. Kaiser,Zbigniew Klimont,Ulrike Lohmann,Joshua P. Schwarz,Drew Shindell,Trude Storelvmo,Stephen G. Warren,Charles S. Zender +30 more
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Journal ArticleDOI
Potential impacts of a warming climate on water availability in snow-dominated regions
TL;DR: In a warmer world, less winter precipitation falls as snow and the melting of winter snow occurs earlier in spring, which leads to a shift in peak river runoff to winter and early spring, away from summer and autumn when demand is highest.
Book ChapterDOI
Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative Forcing
TL;DR: Myhre et al. as discussed by the authors presented the contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2013: Anthropogenic and Natural Radiative forcing.
Journal ArticleDOI
Global and regional climate changes due to black carbon
TL;DR: The second most important contribution to anthropogenic climate warming, after carbon dioxide emissions, was made by black carbon emissions as mentioned in this paper, which is an efficient absorbing agent of solar irradiation that is preferentially emitted in the tropics and can form atmospheric brown clouds in mixture with other aerosols.
References
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