NASA Finds Soot Has Impact on Global Climate

A team of researchers, led by NASA and Columbia University scientists, found airborne, microscopic, black-carbon (soot) particles are even more plentiful around the world, and contribute more to climate change, than was previously assumed by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC).

The researchers concluded if these soot particles are not reduced, at least as rapidly as light-colored pollutants, the world could warm more quickly.

The findings appear in the latest issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It is authored by Makiko Sato, James Hansen and others from NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and Columbia University, New York; Oleg Dubovik, Brent Holben and Mian Chin of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.; and Tica Novakov, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif.

Sato, Hansen and colleagues used global atmospheric measurements taken by the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET). AERONET is a global network of more than 100 sun photometers that measure the amount of sunlight absorbed by aerosols (fine particles in the air) at wavelengths from ultraviolet to infrared. The scientists compared the AERONET data with Chin's global-aerosol computer model and GISS climate model, both of which included sources of soot aerosols consistent with the estimates of the IPCC.

For the complete article on airborne soot, visit: http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2003/0509pollution.html