[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
DAM-L [right-to-water] Tiny Particles of Poluution may Carry Large Consequencesfor Earth's Water Supply (fwd)
----- Forwarded message from svarghese@iatp.org -----
Return-path: <svarghese@iatp.org>
Received: from noxmail.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca (nox.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca [192.139.46.6])
by lox.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca (8.8.7/8.8.8) with ESMTP id PAA21122
for <dianne@pophost.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca>; Mon, 17 Dec 2001 15:22:13 -0500 (EST)
From: svarghese@iatp.org
Received: from mail.iatp.org (iatp-2.InnovSoftD.com [208.141.36.66])
by noxmail.sandelman.ottawa.on.ca (8.11.6/8.11.6) with ESMTP id fBGExFD02879
for <dianne@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca>; Sun, 16 Dec 2001 09:59:16 -0500 (EST)
Received: from mail.iatp.org [208.141.36.110] by mail.iatp.org with ESMTP
(SMTPD32-7.04) id A39FAACC0062; Mon, 17 Dec 2001 14:21:05 -0600
Content-Type: text/plain
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 14:18:46 -0600
Subject: [right-to-water] Tiny Particles of Poluution may Carry Large Consequences for
Earth's Water Supply
To: dianne@sandelman.ottawa.on.ca
Message-ID: <200112171421156.SM01396@mail.iatp.org>
Right to Water (right-to-water@iatp.org) Posted: 12/17/2001 By svarghese@iatp.org
============================================================
TINY PARTICLES OF POLLUTION MAY CARRY LARGE CONSEQUENCES FOR EARTH'S WATER
SUPPLY
According to a United Nations Population Fund report released Nov. 7, water
use has grown six-fold over the past 70 years. "Water may be the resource
that defines the limits of sustainable development," the report notes.
A new study issued by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at
the University of California, San Diego, argues that particles of
human-produced pollution may be playing a significant role in weakening
Earth's water cycle, much more than previously realized. The study was
funded in part by NASA and used new satellite data from NASA's Terra
satellite revealing the global nature of the particles.
Tiny aerosols primarily made up of black carbon, the authors argue, can
lead to a weaker hydrological cycle, which connects directly to water
availability and quality, a major environmental issue of the 21st century.
The paper, based on results obtained during the international Indian Ocean
Experiment (INDOEX), is published in the Dec. 7 issue of the journal Science.
"Initially we were seeing aerosols as mainly a cooling agent, offsetting
global warming. In this article we are saying that perhaps an even bigger
impact of aerosols is on the water budget of the planet," said Scripps
Professor V. Ramanathan, who along with Professor Paul Crutzen, a co-author
of the new study, led the INDOEX science team as co-chief scientists.
"Through INDOEX we found that aerosols are cutting down sunlight going into
the ocean. The energy for the hydrological cycle comes from sunlight.
As sunlight heats the ocean, water escapes into the atmosphere and falls
out as rain. So as aerosols cut down sunlight by large amounts, they may be
spinning down the hydrological cycle of the planet."
The fourth co-author of the paper, Daniel Rosenfeld, also notes that these
aerosol particulates may be suppressing rain over polluted regions. Within
clouds, aerosols can limit the size of cloud droplets, stifling the
development of the larger droplets required for efficient raindrops.
The INDOEX project involved more than 150 scientists across several
disciplines from Austria, France, Germany, India, Maldives, the
Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States. The $25 million project,
sponsored by the National Science Foundation and funded in part by NASA,
the Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration, focused on the Indian Ocean region in a "multiplatform"
analysis approach of satellites, aircraft, ships, surface stations, and
balloons. The project was designed to assess the nature and magnitude of
the chemical pollution over the tropical Indian Ocean and to assess the
significance of the region's aerosols.
A wide range of results from the project --from meteorology to chemistry --
are presented in 25 papers published in a special issue of the Journal of
Geophysical Research hreleased Nov. 27.
Early in the project, INDOEX researchers documented a human-produced
brownish-gray haze layer of about 10 million square kilometers over the
Indian-Asian region. The particles within the haze, the researchers
discovered, were causing a three-fold decrease in solar radiation reaching
the earth's surface as compared with the top of the atmosphere. The
aerosols, typically in the submicrometer- to micrometer-size range, were a
mixture of sulfates, nitrates, organic particles, fly ash, and mineral
dust, formed by fossil fuel combustion and rural biomass burning.
"One of the key revelations from INDOEX is that air pollution is not only
an industrial phenomenon," said Scripps Professor Crutzen, 1995 Nobel
Laureate. "The part of the atmosphere that you would expect to be the
cleanest -- the areas without a lot of industrialization -- in fact can be
very highly polluted, especially during the dry season."
In the new Science paper, Ramanathan, Crutzen, J.T. Kiehl (National Center
for Atmospheric Research), and Rosenfeld (The Hebrew University of
Jerusalem), say the aerosol issues raised from INDOEX are a "major
environmental concern." Not only do they question the role aerosols are
playing on the regional and global hydrological cycle, but, they say,
globally averaged, the aerosol increases the solar heating of the
atmosphere accompanied by a reduction in the solar heating of the surface
of the planet and these effects maybe quite comparable with the forcing due
to greenhouse gases.
"At present these effects are not generally accounted for in climate model
prediction studies, but we will need to include the absorbing aerosols in
future model predictions," said Kiehl.
The immediate next step, the authors argue, is to develop a reliable global
inventory of aerosol emission rates, life times, and concentrations.
Integrating innovative new satellite observations, field experiments, and
laboratory studies with models will pave the way for breakthroughs in our
understanding of aerosols and how they are modifying the environment, they
say.
"Part of these results are important for creating awareness," said Crutzen.
"The biomass burning in the countries that are producing this pollution
cannot go on." In addition to the National Science Foundation, the Science
study was funded by the Department of Energy and NASA
Series of new INDOEX articles shows the affects of human-produced aerosols
Source: scrippsnews
SCRIPPS CONTACTS: Mario Aguilera or Cindy Clark at 858/534-3624
email: scrippsnews@ucsd.edu
============================================================
How to Use this Mailing List
============================================================
You received this e-mail as a result of your registration on the right-to-water mailing list.
To unsubscribe, please send an email to listserv@iatp.org. In the body of the message type:
unsubscribe right-to-water
For a list of other commands and list options, please send email to listserv@iatp.org.
In the body of the message type:
help
Please direct content questions about this list to: mritchie@iatp.org
Please direct technical questions about this service to: support@iatp.org
----- End of forwarded message from svarghese@iatp.org -----