New climate study revisits link between air pollution in East Asia and global warming
Scientist Bjorn Samset says discovery that clean-up may contribute to warming shows intricate nature of climate change and dynamics at play
Over the past decade, clean-up efforts in East Asia have reduced air pollution significantly, improving quality of life and health in the region. But they may also have inadvertently contributed to speeding up global warming, by removing particles that helped to cool the Earth.
Pollutants are made up of aerosols, liquid and solid particles suspended in the air. Although their removal is good for public health, this can lead to less cloud and less ground protection from the sun, and may have altered global climate and weather patterns – although how to quantify the impact is an ongoing debate among scientists.
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“Polluted air may have been masking the full effects of global warming”, said Bjorn Samset, a senior researcher in climate and atmospheric sciences at the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo and a contributing author to the study.
The East Asian region – which includes China, Japan, North and South Korea and Mongolia – has undertaken major efforts to cut air pollution over the past decade. In China especially, efforts to reduce the emission of sulphur dioxide have brought about the world’s most significant improvements to air quality.
The amount of sulphur dioxide polluting the air in East Asia has fallen by an estimated 75 per cent since 2013, according to the study.
The researchers found that emission reduction in East Asia was likely to have contributed up to 0.05 degrees Celsius (0.09 degrees Fahrenheit) of the observed 0.06 degree per decade average rate of global surface warming since 2010.