Global Dimming
Tuesday night I watched Nova on PBS TV. The title of the documentary was “Dimming Sunâ€Â.
This show described the nature of a problem in which the sunlight reaching the earth’s surface is being diminished by air pollution.
A researcher from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in 1985 discovered strong evidence that the sunlight reaching the earth’s surface had diminished by more than 10% of that recorded in the 1960s.
Most scientists ignored this evidence and it is only recently that science has become focused on this problem and has developed further evidence of this phenomenon called ‘global dimming’.
A particular alarming aspect of this phenomenon is that global dimming acts opposite to global warming and there is the conclusion that because of this opposition that the greenhouse effect causing warming is far more rapid than concluded because the effects of air pollution, which would cause global cooling, have balanced out a great part of the warming effects.
Two forces operating in opposition have masked the rapidity of the effects of the greenhouse effect.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/ ... 53,00.html
Global Dimming
Global Dimming
coberst wrote: Global Dimming
A particular alarming aspect of this phenomenon is that global dimming acts opposite to global warming and there is the conclusion that because of this opposition that the greenhouse effect causing warming is far more rapid than concluded because the effects of air pollution, which would cause global cooling, have balanced out a great part of the warming effects.
That does not make any sense at all.
If the dimming is due to adsorption by air polution the energy will be going to heat the air rather than heat the ground but it's still nett input to the system.
A reduction of the light hitting the Earth or an increase in the reflective index of the atmosphere (as in a nuclear winter) would do it but not a generalised increase in atmospheric haze due to an increase in aerosol particulates.
I've obviously misunderstood but where?
A particular alarming aspect of this phenomenon is that global dimming acts opposite to global warming and there is the conclusion that because of this opposition that the greenhouse effect causing warming is far more rapid than concluded because the effects of air pollution, which would cause global cooling, have balanced out a great part of the warming effects.
That does not make any sense at all.
If the dimming is due to adsorption by air polution the energy will be going to heat the air rather than heat the ground but it's still nett input to the system.
A reduction of the light hitting the Earth or an increase in the reflective index of the atmosphere (as in a nuclear winter) would do it but not a generalised increase in atmospheric haze due to an increase in aerosol particulates.
I've obviously misunderstood but where?
Global Dimming
Read the web site.