By Michael Ricciardi •
September 27, 2009
The appeal of shortwave, geoengineering is in it’s purportedly rapid, remediation impact (although no global experiments have been conducted yet). However, the combined climate impact of GHG increases with a geoengineered reduction in shortwave radiation is not known, but, it is feared, could result in environmental “winners” and “losers”–meaning some regions of the planet could experience severe drought, and even increased conflict over water resources.
By Michael Ricciardi •
August 10, 2009
The legendary glaciers of the Himalayan and Hindu Kush mountain ranges have been losing volume at an increasing rate over the past twenty to thirty years. And over this same time period, much data has piled up confirming the role of increased CO2 emissions in global warming trends. Given this, it would be “natural” to assume that CO2-induced warming was also to blame for the glacial melting. But it turns out that much stronger evidence points to the [...]
According to the journal Nature Geosciences, “increasing concentrations of black carbon have substantially contributed to rapid Arctic warming during the past three decades.”
A paper from that journal, “Climate response to regional radiative forcing during the twentieth century,” was authored by climate researchers Drew Shindell, at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Greg Faluvegi of Columbia University. Shindell, Faluvegi, and many other climate scientists believe that limiting black carbon sources may “buy the world some time” in the race to control climate change as richer nations develop their climate change policies and begin taking the slow steps towards overhauling their carbon heavy energy sources.
The researchers assert that aerosols are responsible for “half or more” of Arctic warming. Unexpectedly, their paper’s claims and recommendations sparked a flurry of critical emails, perhaps due to confusion over the atmospheric roles of different aerosols.
