Pollution declines from pandemic shutdowns may aid in answering long-standing questions about how aerosols influence climate.
As the world scrambles to contain the spread of COVID-19, many economic activities have ground to a halt, leading to marked reductions in air pollution. And with the skies clearing, researchers are getting an unprecedented chance to help answer one of climate science’s thorniest open questions: the impact of atmospheric aerosols. What they learn could improve predictions of the earth’s climatic future. “We hope that this situation — as tragic as it is — can have a positive side for our field,” says aerosol researcher Nicolas Bellouin of the University of Reading in England.
Aerosols are tiny particles and droplets that are emitted into the air by myriad sources — from fossil-fuel burning to fertilizer spraying and even natural phenomena such as sea spray. They alter cloud properties and intercept sunlight, with some scattering solar radiation and others absorbing it. All of these factors influence global temperature — sometimes in competing ways. Overall aerosols have a cooling effect on the climate, offsetting some of the warming caused by greenhouse gases — but just how much they have done so to date, or will do so in the future, remains unclear. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations could increase temperatures by anywhere between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius, with the wide range linked, in part, to scientist’s incomplete understanding of the influence of aerosols. “The fact that the aerosol effect on climate, so far, is so uncertain has held us back,” says atmospheric scientist Trude Storelvmo of the University of Oslo.
Part of the problem in parsing out the role of aerosols has been that their sources could not simply be turned off to compare what happens with and without them. But now the response to the pandemic has effectively done so. Scientists are now jumping at the opportunity to spot the differences in everything from specific cloud properties to changes in local temperatures before and after aerosol emissions dropped. “If this goes on, one pretty damn sure prediction that I can make is that we will see a lot of scientific papers on this in a couple of years,” says atmospheric scientist Bjørn Samset of the Center for International Climate Research in Norway…
To read the entire article from Scientific American, click https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/covid-19-could-help-solve-climate-riddles1/
