Taking a closer look at burning of fossil fuels

As we clean up the atmosphere by reducing the amount of coal and oil we burn we can expect a sudden surge in temperature by 1C or 2C.

In 2001, when the Twin Towers were bombed in the US. The American government stopped all flights over the country for three days while they sorted out what had happened and whether there were similar threats. This meant that there were no aeroplanes polluting the atmosphere over that period which was a unique occurrence and not likely to be repeated.

An American Geographer, Andrew Carleton, noticed how bright and clear the skies were and set out to discover the results and by observing the metrological records of weather stations across the US. He discovered that the difference between night time and day time temperatures had increased by 1.1C. In other words, if the night time temperatures remained the same, the day time temperature had increased by 1.1C due to increased penetration of sunlight to the Earth’s surface.

This phenomenon, like a lot of science to do with the clouds, the atmosphere and climate change is extremely complicated as, although moisture is the major greenhouse gas, it can reflect the sun’s heat back into the atmosphere from the top of clouds, shade the earth’s surface, as well as trap the sun’s heat in the greenhouse effect.

In a paper published in Nature by Peter Manhausen, scientists have tried to quantify the effects of burning oil for transport and used ships tracks to measure the sensitivity of the climate to this pollution.

The mechanism by which this works is that a droplet of moisture is a natural event but if a minute spec of burnt carbon is introduced the moisture will condense on it and start to form a cloud. This would be a contrail with a plane but it also happens with the smoke from a ship’s funnel.

The cloud that is formed by this pollution is different to a normal cloud as it is much brighter and reflects the sun’s heat into space which has the effect of cooling the planet and trying to quantify this is what the research is all about. The results of the research show the previous research, that the drop in temperature was equivalent to 1.3 watts per square metre, was understated as it is now calculated to be 2.26 watts per square metre. It shows that the planet is 73 per cent more sensitive to global dimming than previously estimated.

The problem for us is that as we clean up the atmosphere by reducing the amount of coal and oil we burn, we can expect a surge in temperature by 1C or 2C. This probably reflects the true situation of where climate change really is, as with 420 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, we should have much higher temperatures than we have. Delaying action on curbing burning of fossil fuels only kicks the can down the road for future generations.