Cleaner Air Aids Global Warming

The Christian Science Monitor is reporting...
New measurements of tiny particles in Earth's atmosphere contain a sobering message: All those hard-won efforts to cut air pollution may unwittingly accelerate global warming.

The result: The planet is likely to warm more and faster than current projections suggest, according to a team of British and American scientists.

The group has produced the most precise estimates yet of how tiny particles, known as aerosols, could affect the world's climate. Aerosols, which include pollutants, have a cooling effect on the atmosphere, and the team's work suggests that the cooling effect is strong — nearly as strong as the top estimates of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Thus, the dwindling presence of aerosols means that global average temperatures could rise faster than previously estimated and reach toward the high end of projections for the end of the century.

Those estimates currently range from 2.7 to 7.9 degrees F., depending on how emissions of greenhouse gases and other factors play out in coming years.

The results, published in the current edition of Nature, imply "future atmospheric warming greater than is presently predicted, as aerosol emissions continue to decline," suggests the team, led by Nicolas Bellouin at Britain's Meteorological Office in Exeter.

Sometimes you just can't win! Damned if you do, damned if you don't!