Related MediaFeb 04, 2021 13:39:43 IST
The Earth erupted a slight fever in 2020, partly due to cleaner air from locking in the pandemic, a new study has found. For a short time, temperatures in some parts of the eastern United States, Russia and China were as much as one-half to two-thirds of a degree (0.3 to 0.37 degrees Celsius) warmer. That’s due to fewer soot and sulfate particles from car fuel and burning coal, which typically cools the atmosphere for a while by exposure to the sun’s heat, a study Tuesday in the magazine Geophysical Research Letters recitation.
Overall, the planet was around .05 degrees (.03 degrees Celsius) warmer for the year as the air had less cooling aerosols, which is unlike carbon dioxide pollution, see you study.
“Cleaning the air can warm the planet as it cools the pollutants (soot and sulfate)” that climate scientists have long known, “said lead study author Andrew Gettelman, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. His numbers come from comparing 2020 weather with computer models that were similar to 2020 without the pollution reductions from pandemic locks.
A civilian worker, wearing an anti-pollution mask, sweeps the road amid heavy smog, in New Delhi, on Friday, November 15, 2019. A thick layer of toxic smog was trapped in Delhi while the pollution level stays in the ‘real’ category for the fourth consecutive day in the capital. Image: PTI / Arun Sharma
This temporary warming effect from fewer grains was stronger in 2020 than the effects of carbon dioxide emissions with less heat, Gettelman said. That’s because carbon stays in the atmosphere for more than a century with long-term effects, while aerosols stay in the air for about a week.
Even without the decline in cooling aerosols, global temperatures in 2020 were already rushing by breaking the annual heat index due to the burning of coal, oil and natural gas – and the effects of aerosol may have been be enough to make this the hottest year in NASA measurement system, said NASA chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt, who was not part of this study but said it confirms further research.
“Clean air warms the planet a tiny bit, but it kills far fewer people with air pollution,” Gettelman said.