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Published on: June 12, 2016
Climate effects of black carbon aerosols in China and India
Surabi Menon1, James Hansen, Larissa Nazarenko
1NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York, NY 10025, USA. smenon@giss.nasa.gov
Abstract:
In recent decades, there has been a tendency toward increased summer floods in south China, increased drought in north China, and moderate cooling in China and India while most of the world has been warming. We used a global climate model to investigate possible aerosol contributions to these trends. We found precipitation and temperature changes in the model that were comparable to those observed if the aerosols included a large proportion of absorbing black carbon ("soot"), similar to observed amounts. Absorbing aerosols heat the air, alter regional atmospheric stability and vertical motions, and affect the large-scale circulation and hydrologic cycle with significant regional climate effects.
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