Scientists have uncovered a summertime climate pattern in and around the Arctic that could drive co-occurrences of European heatwaves and large-scale wildfires with air pollution over Siberia and subpolar North America.
Joint release by Hokkaido University, Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo, Ulsan National Institute of Science.
Fire plays a pivotal role in shaping terrestrial ecosystems and the chemical composition of the atmosphere and thus influences Earth’s climate. The trend and magnitude of fire activity over the past few centuries are controversial, which hinders understanding of preindustrial to present-day aerosol radiative forcing. Here, we present evidence from records of 14 Antarctic ice cores and 1 central Andean ice core, suggesting that historical fire activity in the Southern Hemisphere (SH) exceeded present-day levels. To understand this observation, we use a global fire model to show that overall SH fire emissions could have declined by 30% over the 20th century, possibly because of the rapid expansion of land use for agriculture and animal production in middle to high latitudes. Radiative forcing calculations suggest that the decreasing trend in SH fire emissions over the past century largely compensates for the cooling effect of increasing aerosols from fossil fuel and biofuel sources.
In a First, Scientists Map Particle-Laden Rivers in the Sky weathernationtv.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from weathernationtv.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In a First, Scientists Map Particle-Laden Rivers in the Sky
An atmospheric river carrying dust particles blows across the North Atlantic Ocean from Africa to the Caribbean in July 2018. Credit: Suomi/NPP satellite images from NASA Worldview website. Animation by climate.gov
In Brief:
Windy regions high in the atmosphere can transport pollutants like dust or soot thousands of miles around the world and disrupt everyday life for thousands of people.
Last summer, “Godzilla” came for the Caribbean and the U.S. Gulf Coast. This particular monster wasn’t of the sci-fi variety, but a massive dust storm kicked up by winds from the Sahara Desert and carried an ocean away. The dust storm was an extreme example of a phenomenon that happens regularly: the global transport of dust, soot, and other airborne particles collectively known as aerosols by jets of winds in the atmosphere, forming what are called aerosol atmospheric rivers.