Black Carbon Reductions Could Reverse Arctic Warming Within Weeks

A new study from the journal Nature Geoscience has found that 50% of the total temperature increases in the Arctic over the last century have been due to black carbon, a substance that only stays in the atmosphere for several days to weeks.

This means that if black carbon emissions were immediately halted, it may only take a few weeks for warming trends to reverse by half.

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Black carbon is formed during the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels, biofuels or biomass, which primarily occurs because of forest deforestation and savanna clearing, diesel engine emissions, biofuel and coal burning, and power generation from small boilers. Just last year it was discovered that black carbon had a stronger global warming effect than any greenhouse gas besides carbon dioxide.

Though unlike carbon dioxide, which can linger in the atmosphere for more than 100 years, black carbon has an alarmingly short lifespan, which makes cutting its emissions the most efficient and fastest way of preventing Arctic warming that is known. And the good news is that technology already exists for drastically reducing black carbon emissions throughout the world.

Black carbon is particularly instrumental in Arctic and glacial warming because its particles, after already warming the atmosphere, eventually fall back to the Earth and darken the usually reflective snow and ice. Thus, instead of having a positive cooling effect, those white, reflective surfaces end up absorbing sunlight, which accelerates melt and runoff. In the Himalayas, for instance, the overall warming effect of black carbon soot is at least equal to that of carbon dioxide.

By far, the leading source for black carbon emissions comes from developing countries. India and China account for 25-35% of emissions alone, and much of the rest comes from other Asian nations, Latin America and Africa. Pollution is particularly bad in China, where black carbon emissions doubled from 2000 and 2006, which is a big reason why the Himalayan glaciers are some of the most effected. The U.S. and Europe have managed to minimize their release of soot due to modern technology, which has been implemented since the 1950s primarily for the purpose of improving air quality and public health.

That technology could have a huge effect if it is shared with the developing world. Furthermore, the U.S. and the European Union could set a crucial example by adopting the pending International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulations. Since emissions released within the Arctic zone have the greatest impact on that region, regulating diesel emissions by ships and transportation in the North could have an immediate impact.

Of course, the leading culprit in global warming is still the release of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, so minimizing black carbon soot is only a small part of the solution. But since cleaning up black carbon could have such a gigantic, immediate impact, there’s now good reason to be hopeful that real progress could be made in reversing the effects of global warming within our lifetimes.

Image Credit: El Cap’n on Flickr under a Creative Commons License

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