Something's'a-soot'
Melanie Kucera - The Daily Iowan
Issue date: 3/26/08 Section: Metro
Soot just got a little bit darker.
Caused by diesel fuel and biofuel exhaust, soot has been shown to warm the atmosphere three to four times greater than previous reports have shown.
The research, published in the Sunday online edition of the Nature Geoscience journal, was collected by UI Professor Greg Carmichael, a co-director of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, and V. Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego.
The two have worked specifically on research with black carbon for around the past five years.
Soot is a form of black carbon, which absorbs sunlight and in turn causes more heat in the air - thus contributing to global climate change.
"Black carbon has the dubious honor of being the second culprit [of global climate change]," Ramanathan said, noting that carbon dioxide is known as the "major culprit or villain."
Carmichael noted that black carbon's "beauty" is that it not only warms the atmosphere but also worsens health conditions.
"By reducing black carbon, we will improve our health and reduce the warming," he said.
The UI professor also said another positive about attacking black carbon is that action can be taken in the near future - reducing something such as carbon dioxide, on the other hand, will take decades.
Initiatives are already beginning.
Black smoke from diesel trucks has been outlawed, so diesel engines built after Jan. 1, 2007, must have sophisticated control devices, said Charles Stanier, a UI assistant professor of biochemical engineering.
Ramanathan, who is originally from India, is trying to get people to cook using solar power. He said that hundreds of thousands in India have died because of the effects of black carbon - which include deaths from heart attacks and lung problems.
The leading method by which Americans produce black carbon is through transportation; construction work is another big contributor, Carmichael said.
Their data were collected by NASA satellites, aircraft, and ground stations, Ramanathan said.
The two noted that though they did not discover black carbon's significance, they did find how much more important it is to global warming.
The most recent data released about black carbon came from the International Panel on Climate Change in 2007, which received the Nobel Peace Prize. Ramanathan and Carmichael said the panel's data found that the effect of black carbon on the atmosphere to be about one-third less strong than what they had found.
Though the researchers' findings can be looked at a success, Ramanathan had a slight different outlook.
"I am worried that there is one more major problem we have to deal with and combat," he said.
E-mail DI reporter Melanie Kucera at:
melanie-kucera@uiowa.edu
Caused by diesel fuel and biofuel exhaust, soot has been shown to warm the atmosphere three to four times greater than previous reports have shown.
The research, published in the Sunday online edition of the Nature Geoscience journal, was collected by UI Professor Greg Carmichael, a co-director of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research, and V. Ramanathan, an atmospheric scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California-San Diego.
The two have worked specifically on research with black carbon for around the past five years.
Soot is a form of black carbon, which absorbs sunlight and in turn causes more heat in the air - thus contributing to global climate change.
"Black carbon has the dubious honor of being the second culprit [of global climate change]," Ramanathan said, noting that carbon dioxide is known as the "major culprit or villain."
Carmichael noted that black carbon's "beauty" is that it not only warms the atmosphere but also worsens health conditions.
"By reducing black carbon, we will improve our health and reduce the warming," he said.
The UI professor also said another positive about attacking black carbon is that action can be taken in the near future - reducing something such as carbon dioxide, on the other hand, will take decades.
Initiatives are already beginning.
Black smoke from diesel trucks has been outlawed, so diesel engines built after Jan. 1, 2007, must have sophisticated control devices, said Charles Stanier, a UI assistant professor of biochemical engineering.
Ramanathan, who is originally from India, is trying to get people to cook using solar power. He said that hundreds of thousands in India have died because of the effects of black carbon - which include deaths from heart attacks and lung problems.
The leading method by which Americans produce black carbon is through transportation; construction work is another big contributor, Carmichael said.
Their data were collected by NASA satellites, aircraft, and ground stations, Ramanathan said.
The two noted that though they did not discover black carbon's significance, they did find how much more important it is to global warming.
The most recent data released about black carbon came from the International Panel on Climate Change in 2007, which received the Nobel Peace Prize. Ramanathan and Carmichael said the panel's data found that the effect of black carbon on the atmosphere to be about one-third less strong than what they had found.
Though the researchers' findings can be looked at a success, Ramanathan had a slight different outlook.
"I am worried that there is one more major problem we have to deal with and combat," he said.
E-mail DI reporter Melanie Kucera at:
melanie-kucera@uiowa.edu
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