Move Over CO2, Soot Was Causing Climate Change In The 1860s
Tuesday, September 3, 2013 - 17:00
in Earth & Climate
In the zeal to promote carbon dioxide emissions as a magic bullet to stave off climate change, a lot of other factors were minimized. Soot was a big one, but a new study in PNAS suggests that the abrupt retreat of mountain glaciers in the European Alps in the 1860s was due to absorption of sunlight in snow by soot. A rapidly industrializing Europe still gets the blame, but for a different reason. read more