Dirty old birds shed light on key global warming particle

WASHINGTON (AP) — Some dirty old birds are helping scientists better understand one of the more baffling climate change mysteries.

University of Chicago of the researchers Academy Shane DuBay and ces.

Carl Fuldner examined This is important 1,347 dead because scientists birds in museums in believe soot, also Chicago, Detroit and called black carbon, Pittsburgh, comparing has an important birds from the role in climate 1900s and 1910s to change. They know birds from decades it traps heat, but scientists l at er. haven’t been

The difference was able to study it well black and white. because it doesn’t

Feathers of birds stay in the atmosphere in the 1900s were long. blacker than birds “The problem previously just 20 or 30 years is that there later, suggesting that was no way to characterize there was more soot the particles in the atmosphere from this early industrial than scientists originally era,” thought, according Fuldner said. “You to a study can’t look at the soot published Monday particles coming out in the Proceedings of the 1910 manufacturing National of Scien plant in Joliet, Illinois.”

Black carbon in the air comes from inefficient burning of fossil fuels, especially coal. Some recent studies call it the second most potent greenhouse “molecule” — because unlike the most important, carbon dioxide, it is a solid, not a gas.

The black carbon coating the birds stuffed long ago now give scientists a better record, showing past pollution may have been underestimated, Fuldner and DuBay said. Black carbon emissions dropped around 1930 as homes turned away from coal for heat. Coal was used more and more for manufacturing and electric power, but that produces less soot than burning it in homes for heat, they said.

The study is fascinating to experts who are trying to predict future warming from black carbon.

Some scientists say reducing black carbon emissions may be an easier way to fight climate change than by just reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Other scientists say the impacts of the study on projections for future warming would likely be modest — at best — in part because black carbon stays in the atmosphere for such a short time.