Even when deniers are right about something, they're wrong.

[wtmusic]

That takes a special talent.

About a month ago, the media reported on a NAS study which found that because coal smoke reflects sunlight into space, it can actually reduce global warming. A coal plant comes online in China every week, the output of which may have contributed to a cooling effect over the last five years - and deniers were quick to seize upon that fact as evidence AGW is a fraud (a similar phenomenon occurred post-WWII as the result of wartime production).

Aside from the fact that unfiltered coal smoke is responsible for millions of premature deaths every year there are plenty of other reasons to scrub it (ocean acidification is near the top of the list). But a new study from the University of Michigan finds that the possible "aerosol whiplash", or amount scrubbing could make global warming worse, has been underestimated by up to 35%.

Satellite methods underestimate indirect climate forcing by aerosols

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/07/25/1018526108

(Note error bars corresponding to Total Aerosol effects)



Burning coal will be the end of us.

[Arkansas Granny]

1. I saw a similar finding about jet contrails when planes were grounded after 9/11.

9/11 study: Air traffic affects climate

August 07, 2002|Richard Stenger CNN
The thin wisps of condensation that trail jet airliners have a significant influence on the climate, according to scientists who studied U.S. skies during a rare interruption in national air traffic after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

During the three-day commercial flight hiatus, when the artificial clouds known as contrails all but disappeared, the variations in high and low temperatures increased by 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit) each day, said meteorological researchers.

While the temperature range is significant, whether the jet clouds have a net effect on global warming remains unknown.

http://articles.cnn.com/2002-08-07/tech/contrails.climate_1_contrails-cirrus-clouds-david-travis?_s=PM:TECH

I had originally seen this reported on NOVA or Frontline a few years ago.

[wtmusic]

3. Yep, that's represented on the graph above

Although it shows only .01 watts/meter2 that's a global estimate, and it's a safe bet that a disproportionate amouht of air traffic occurs over the United States.

:thumbsup:

[GliderGuider]

2. One small correction - scrubbing won't help with ocean acidification.

Acidification isn't related to aerosols, but to CO2 which can't be scrubbed out.

Paging Dr. Canfield...

[wtmusic]

5. It's related to both.

"EPA has taken steps to limit the amount of NOx and SO2 emitted into the atmosphere because they are the main contributors to acid deposition (for more information, see EPA’s Acid Rain Program)."

http://www.epa.gov/acidrain/reducing/index.html

[GliderGuider]

7. I hadn't heard that NOx and SO2 were significant in ocean acidification.

Scubbing them is a good idea of course, but 30 gigatonnes of CO2 per year is the real problem as far as the oceans are concerned. We can't just scrub the nitrogen and sulphur oxides and go home for a beer.

[OKIsItJustMe]

9. Impact of anthropogenic atmospheric nitrogen and sulfur deposition on ocean acidification…

http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=7545&tid=282&cid=31286&ct=162

News Release : Acid Rain Has a Disproportionate Impact on Coastal Waters

Research Suggests Sulfur, Nitrogen Emissions Play a Role in Changing Chemistry Near the Coast

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
[phone]
[e-mail]

September 7, 2007
Media Relations Office
93 Water Street MS #16
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

The release of sulfur and nitrogen into the atmosphere by power plants and agricultural activities plays a minor role in making the ocean more acidic on a global scale, but the impact is greatly amplified in the shallower waters of the coastal ocean, according to new research by atmospheric and marine chemists.

Ocean “acidification” occurs when chemical compounds such as carbon dioxide, sulfur, or nitrogen mix with seawater, a process which lowers the pH and reduces the storage of carbon.

Ocean acidification hampers the ability of marine organisms—such as sea urchins, corals, and certain types of plankton—to harness calcium carbonate for making hard outer shells or “exoskeletons.” These organisms provide essential food and habitat to other species, so their demise could affect entire ocean ecosystems.

The findings were published this week in the online “early edition” of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; a printed version will be issued later this month.

…

(Emphasis added by me.)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0702218104

Impact of anthropogenic atmospheric nitrogen and sulfur deposition on ocean acidification and the inorganic carbon system

Scott C. Doney * , † ,
Natalie Mahowald ‡ ,
Ivan Lima *,
Richard A. Feely § ,
Fred T. Mackenzie ¶ ,
Jean-Francois Lamarque ‖ , and
Phil J. Rasch ‡

Abstract

Fossil fuel combustion and agriculture result in atmospheric deposition of 0.8 Tmol/yr reactive sulfur and 2.7 Tmol/yr nitrogen to the coastal and open ocean near major source regions in North America, Europe, and South and East Asia. Atmospheric inputs of dissociation products of strong acids (HNO₃ and H₂SO₄) and bases (NH₃) alter surface seawater alkalinity, pH, and inorganic carbon storage. We quantify the biogeochemical impacts by using atmosphere and ocean models. The direct acid/base flux to the ocean is predominately acidic (reducing total alkalinity) in the temperate Northern Hemisphere and alkaline in the tropics because of ammonia inputs. However, because most of the excess ammonia is nitrified to nitrate (NO₃ −) in the upper ocean, the effective net atmospheric input is acidic almost everywhere. The decrease in surface alkalinity drives a net air–sea efflux of CO₂, reducing surface dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC); the alkalinity and DIC changes mostly offset each other, and the decline in surface pH is small. Additional impacts arise from nitrogen fertilization, leading to elevated primary production and biological DIC drawdown that reverses in some places the sign of the surface pH and air–sea CO₂ flux perturbations. On a global scale, the alterations in surface water chemistry from anthropogenic nitrogen and sulfur deposition are a few percent of the acidification and DIC increases due to the oceanic uptake of anthropogenic CO₂. However, the impacts are more substantial in coastal waters, where the ecosystem responses to ocean acidification could have the most severe implications for mankind.

…

[Barrett808]

10. It's these giant perturbations to the elemental cycles that will do us in

Humans have introduced immense excursions every biogeochemical cycle that matters to life: N, P, S, and of course C. The C perturbation disturbs the hydrologic cycle, and all of these perturbations disturb the phenological cycles.

In engineering, we'd call this situation a "cluster-fuck".

[Barrett808]

4. Also, coal may have been responsible for the P-T extinction event:

Earth’s greatest mass extinction caused by coal: study

[GliderGuider]

6. I hadn't read about that yet. Thanks for posting it!

Coal is the planet-killer, then and now.

[OKIsItJustMe]

8. FWIW: Despite the hype, there really wasn’t much new here

This study, published in PNAS as well, is from March of 1999 (emphasis added by me.)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.96.7.3372

Airborne minerals and related aerosol particles: Effects on climate and the environment

Peter R. Buseck* and
Mihály Pósfai†

Abstract

Aerosol particles are ubiquitous in the troposphere and exert an important influence on global climate and the environment. They affect climate through scattering, transmission, and absorption of radiation as well as by acting as nuclei for cloud formation. A significant fraction of the aerosol particle burden consists of minerals, and most of the remainder— whether natural or anthropogenic—consists of materials that can be studied by the same methods as are used for fine-grained minerals. Our emphasis is on the study and character of the individual particles. Sulfate particles are the main cooling agents among aerosols; we found that in the remote oceanic atmosphere a significant fraction is aggregated with soot, a material that can diminish the cooling effect of sulfate. Our results suggest oxidization of SO₂ may have occurred on soot surfaces, implying that even in the remote marine troposphere soot provided nuclei for heterogeneous sulfate formation. Sea salt is the dominant aerosol species (by mass) above the oceans. In addition to being important light scatterers and contributors to cloud condensation nuclei, sea-salt particles also provide large surface areas for heterogeneous atmospheric reactions. Minerals comprise the dominant mass fraction of the atmospheric aerosol burden. As all geologists know, they are a highly heterogeneous mixture. However, among atmospheric scientists they are commonly treated as a fairly uniform group, and one whose interaction with radiation is widely assumed to be unpredictable. Given their abundances, large total surface areas, and reactivities, their role in influencing climate will require increased attention as climate models are refined.

…

Sulfates§ and Associated Soot and Organic Species. Sulfates are probably the main climate-cooling aerosols (51–53). They scatter solar radiation and are effective as CCN; the result is negative forcing and thus cooling at Earth’s surface. The radiative forcing of sulfate aerosol particles, especially in the Northern Hemisphere, is roughly equivalent in magnitude but opposite in sign to the combined forcing by the greenhouse gases (12, 51, 53–55).

…

[wtmusic]

11. Satellite measurements were looked at as a possible confirmation of

mathematical models; IMO the point of this article is that they probably aren't doing a very good job and that the models could be more accurate.

[OKIsItJustMe]

12. The study I cited used actual physical sampling (not models)

http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.96.7.3372

…

Our group has focused on the painstaking but necessary analysis of individual particles. High-spatial-resolution methods, using electron beams as the primary probes of both chemistry and structure, have been developed to study increasingly fine-grained minerals. We examine the inorganic and, in special cases, the organic fraction of aerosol particles with electron microprobe analyzers and scanning electron microscopes (SEMs) and transmission electron microscopes (TEMs). In this paper we provide a background to the above issues and indicate ways in which mineralogical experience and experimental techniques can provide uniquely useful information. We first review the broad problems and briefly describe the analytical techniques, then discuss some of our recent transmission electron microscopy results regarding sulfate, soot, sea salt, and mineral aerosols.

…

Two recent international research programs are shedding important new insights onto the role of aerosols in the troposphere. The Aerosol Characterization Experiments (ACE) took place in late 1995 in the Southern Ocean near Tasmania (ACE-1) and in 1997 in the North Atlantic (ACE-2). They produced integrated measurements from ships, airplanes, and ground stations; ACE-1 involved researchers from 45 institutions in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia (49).

In the ACE-1 campaign we used two platforms. At Cape Grim, Tasmania, we collected aerosol particles onto filters in a two-stage impactor (for SEM analysis) and directly onto TEM grids. We also used a one-stage impactor that was mounted on a C-130 aircraft. In this paper we use results from a Lagrangian experiment in which a tagged air mass was followed and the aerosol evolution within it studied over time. The airplane flew “stacked circles,” with each circle at a different altitude.

From the ACE-2 experiment we use data obtained from particles collected onto TEM grids that were placed on filters. The sampling station was on a mountain top (at 2,600 m altitude) on Izaña, Canary Islands. We also include results from earlier experiments in the equatorial Pacific (FeLINE; ref. 41) and the North Atlantic (ASTEX/MAGE; refs. 42, 50).

…

[wtmusic]

13. 14-year-old data that has nothing to do with satellites. nt

[OKIsItJustMe]

14. I guess you missed my point

A study from the late 90’s said (at that time) the cooling effects of the sulfates in the air basically balanced out the warming effects of the greenhouse gases.

Following a period of relatively slow warming, a study is released that says, “the cooling effect of the sulfates in the air has basically balanced out the warming effect of the greenhouse gases for the past several years” and it is presented (by the “skeptics”) as being a dramatic new discovery, refuting all of known climate science.