In 1975, Newsweek — citing the supposed wisdom of scientists — warned of a “cooling world” and alluded to proposed remedies such as intentionally “melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers.”
This narrative, which was pushed in large part by the media, perished only to be replaced by another: global warming. According to failed presidential candidate Al Gore and others, warmer temps not only meant more T-shirt weather but polar bear drownings, rising sea levels, doom for coral reefs, and the melting of the North Polar ice cap.
‘The scattering has a local cooling effect on the surface below.’
Thankfully, New York City is not under water, polar bears are prospering, coral reefs are more resilient than previously imagined, and the North Pole is doing just fine.
But the expert class whose prophecies appear to fall flat on a perennial basis now have a new worry. They have determined that the heat waves gripping Europe are not the result of a failure to stop emissions but of too much success.
A new study published in the American Geophysical Union’s peer-reviewed journal Geophysical Research Letters links the dramatic increase in summer temperatures over Europe, especially in the past decade, to the continent’s successful reduction of air pollution as part of initiatives aimed at tackling acid rain and “global warming.”
After four decades of increases, there was a “strong decrease” of sulfate aerosol emissions over Europe between 1980 and 2000, said the study.
The main human-caused source of sulfate aerosol emissions, which are also known as sulfur dioxide, is the sulfur content of fossil fuels released through combustion.
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“The contribution of aerosols has a turning point around 1980, coinciding with a reduction of sulfate aerosol emissions over Europe resulting from the Montreal protocol,” said the new study.
The Montreal Protocol was an international agreement focusing on globally phasing out allegedly ozone-depleting substances, namely those chlorofluorocarbons used in refrigeration, air conditioning, foam blowing, various aerosols, and other applications. The treaty, which is the only universally ratified treaty in the United Nations’ history, went into force on Jan. 1, 1989.
While coinciding with the Montreal Protocol’s ratification, sulfate aerosol emissions were chiefly driven down in Europe — by an estimated 80% over the past three decades — as the result of other international protocols adopted across the continent, setting the stage for caps on industrial sulfur dioxide emissions, low-sulfur oil standards, new vehicle regulations, and the development of numerous desulfurization plants.
The study noted that “these changes have a direct impact on temperatures” — with temperatures negatively associated with aerosol levels.
Pedro Roldan-Gomez, an author of the paper who works as an earth sciences researcher at the Barcelona Supercomputing Center, told the Telegraph, “Now that the sulphates are disappearing over Europe we can see the full impact of the carbon dioxide emissions.”
“From 1980, Europe warmed around 1C more than the average of extratropical areas of the Northern Hemisphere, and around 1.5C more than the global average,” said Roldan-Gomez. “Most of this excess warming over Europe can be linked to the reduction of particle emissions.”
A separate study published last year in the journal NPJ Climate and Atmospheric Science similarly found that anthropogenic aerosol emission decline was “the dominant contribution to the excess warming in summer.”
According to a 2016 study in Nature Geoscience, these air pollution reductions in Europe have amplified arctic warming in the fall and winter.
NASA’s Goddard Earth Sciences Division Projects notes that “aerosols scatter (reflect) a portion of the Sun’s incoming light, and, dependent on type, may also absorb some. These are known as ‘direct radiative effects’ of aerosols. The scattering has a local cooling effect on the surface below, while absorption has a local warming effect on the atmosphere where the aerosols are located.”
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