7250ENV: WEEK 4

AEROSOLS AND THEIR IMPACT

ON CLIMATE
Associate Professor Al Gabric
School of Environment and Science
 STUDY RESOURCES FOR THIS WEEK

Text: Eggleton, T. (2013). A Short Introduction to Climate Change (e-book), Chapter 12.
IPCC, AR5, Chapter 12 (very technical read) (online report) 
For a very good introduction, please view this video by Professor Meinrat Andreae:
https://lt.org/publication/what-impact-aerosol-particles-cloud-formation
Thinking music:

Source: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lkcvrxj0eLY 2

TOPICS COVERED

• Aerosols and their

important role in CC
• Sources
• Impacts on radiative budget
• Geo-engineering the
climate?

3
NATURAL AND ANTHROPOGENIC AEROSOL SOURCES

• Aerosols are minute airborne particles, ranging in size from

around 0.001 to 100 µm in diameter, and have a profound effect
on the Earth's climate system.
• Major natural aerosol components: sea salt, mineral dust (soils),
natural sulphate (from marine phytoplankton), volcanic eruptions,
emissions from forest fires
• Anthropogenic sources: fossil fuel combustion, biomass burning
for land clearing, agriculture.

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BIOMASS BURNING, INDONESIA SEPT 2015

5
Image source: Newscabal UK
 MICROSCOPY SHOWING THE
WIDE VARIETY OF AEROSOL SHAPES

Image source: Urban Emissions Blog

From left to right: volcanic ash, pollen, sea salt, and soot.

See also:
Thunderstorm asthma - Melbourne 2016
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 THE ROLE OF AEROSOLS IN CLIMATE REGULATION

• Aerosols can influence the amount of sunlight that reaches

the earth’s surface, alter the micro-physical properties of
clouds, and impact the hydrological system.
• Aerosols composition and size is dependent on the source
and mechanism of their formation.
• The impact of aerosols on the Earth’s radiative budget is
thought to be very important, but the science is complex
and not yet completely understood.

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 CLOUDS, AEROSOLS AND CLIMATE CHANGE

• Clouds affect the radiation budget directly by reflecting sunlight

into space (cooling the Earth) or absorbing sunlight and heat
emitted by the Earth.
• When clouds absorb sunlight and heat, less energy escapes to
space and the planet warms.
• To understand how clouds impact the energy budget, scientists
need to know the composition of cloud particles, the altitude of
clouds and the extent to which clouds at different altitudes
overlap each other.

8
Image from NASA portrays global aerosol distribution and movement across our planet. The
model was produced by the Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 (GEOS-5)
which is capable of simulating worldwide weather at resolutions of 10 to 3.5 km.
In this image we can see aerosols in the form of dust (red), sea salt (blue), smoke (green) and
sulfate particles (white). View the simulation on the NASA site 9
CLOUDS AND
AEROSOLS

Two of the biggest

uncertainties in
understanding and
projecting climate
change are the
radiative effects of
clouds and Image source: Bullard & Livingstone. Retrieved from:
https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-1-4020-5719-9_20.pdf
Image source: ABC Science. Retrieved from:
https://www.abc.net.au/reslib/201509/r1476364_21628442.jpg

aerosols!
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 AEROSOLS AND CLIMATE

The Direct aerosol effect

Scattering and absorption of solar and terrestrial
radiation
 cooling at the top of the atmosphere from scattering
aerosols such as sulfate
 warming at the top of the atmosphere from
absorbing aerosols such as soot

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 AEROSOLS AND CLIMATE

1st Indirect aerosol effect (cloud albedo effect)

For a constant cloud water content
more aerosols lead to more and smaller cloud droplets
 larger cross sectional area
 more reflection of incoming solar radiation (brighter clouds)

2nd Indirect aerosol effect (cloud lifetime effect)

The more and smaller cloud droplets will not collide as efficiently
 decrease drizzle formation
 increase cloud lifetime
 more reflection of solar radiation

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EFFECT OF AEROSOLS

This striking image illustrates the 1st

indirect effect of aerosols on the Earth's
radiation budget.
White cloud streaks over the northern
Pacific Ocean stem from aerosols emitted
into the lower atmosphere in exhaust from
ship engines.
Small water or cloud droplets form around
these added aerosols, increasing the
brightness of clouds over the ship tracks as
compared to the surrounding clouds.
Image source: NASA. Retrieved from: 13
https://eoimages.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/imagerecords/2000/2440/PacificVapor_M2002119_lrg.jpg
TOPICS COVERED

• Aerosols and their important

role in CC
• Sources
• Impacts on radiative budget
• Geo-engineering the climate?

14
 NATURAL SOURCES OF AEROSOLS

• Volcanic emissions
• Sea salt from ocean spray
• Mineral dust from soils (natural?)
• Forest wild fires
• Marine phytoplankton

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One of the largest historical eruptions occurred in 1815 from the volcano Tambora, an
explosive caldera located on the island of Sumbawa, Indonesia (8S, 118E).
The eruption created global climate anomalies; 1816 became known as the Year Without a
Summer because of the effect on North American and European weather.
Agricultural crops failed and livestock died in much of the Northern Hemisphere, resulting in
the worst famine of the 19thC. 16
Mt Pinatubo eruption (Philippines) June
1991.

The ash cloud from this eruption rose 22

miles (35 km) into the air.
Image Source: National Geographic

Nearly 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide were

injected into the stratosphere and dispersal
of this gas cloud around the world caused
global temperatures to drop temporarily
(1991 through 1993) by about 1°F (0.5°C) !

17
Image Source unknown
 EASTERN AUSTRALIA – OCTOBER 2002,
DUST STORMS AND FOREST FIRES

Dust
Plume

We are
here!

Image Source: Griffin & Kellogg. Retrieved from: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10393-004-0120-8 18

FOREST FIRES EASTERN AUSTRALIA – NOVEMBER 2019

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Image Source: ABC. Retrieved from: https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/11689300-3x2-700x467.jpg
 NATURAL MARINE AEROSOLS

A wide variety of trace gases (e.g. dimethyl sulfide,

organohalogens, ammonia, non-methane and oxygenated
hydrocarbons, volatile oxygenated organics and nitrous oxide)
are formed in marine waters by biological and photochemical
processes.

This leads in many, but not all cases to super-saturation of the

water relative to marine air concentrations and a net flux of trace
gas from ocean to the atmosphere.

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 DIMETHYLSULFIDE: (CH 3 ) 2 S

Dimethylsulfide (DMS) is the most abundant form of volatile sulfur in the ocean,
and is synthesized by phytoplankton and other organisms incl. corals

Since James Lovelock postulated in 1972 that DMS could account for the ‘missing’
global flux of gaseous sulphur from the oceans to the atmosphere, some 150
oceanographic cruises have compiled data on its ubiquity and super-saturation in
surface seawater

Today, DMS is recognized as the main natural source of reduced sulfur to the
troposphere

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 CLAW HYPOTHESIS
DMS-Climate Feedback Cycle

More Cloud Increased Scattering

Droplets and Higher Cloud
Albedo

Cloud Nucleation

More Cloud
Condensation Nuclei
Loss of Solar Radiation to Space

Formation of Water-
soluble Particles

More Non-sea salt

Sulphates
2-
(SO4 )

Reduced Earth Reduced Solar

Surface Irradiance
Oxidation Temperature Below Clouds

Effects on Planktonic
DMS(gas)
Ecosystem ?

Ventilation

DMS(aqueous) Food-web Production of DMS

(CH3SCH3)

Charslon, R.J., Lovelock, J.E., Andreae, M.O., & Warren, S.G. (1987). Oceanic
phytoplankton, atmospheric sulphur, cloud albedo and climate. Nature, 326, 655-661.
Retrieved from: https://www.nature.com/articles/326655a0 22
 DMS EMISSIONS UNDER FUTURE WARMING?

Research still ongoing, but it seems that DMS emissions will increase,
especially in the polar oceans.

For a nice review see: Gabric, A. (2018). The nexus between sea ice and
polar emissions of marine biogenic aerosols. Bulletin of the American
Meteorological Society. Retrieved from:
https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10.1175/BAMS-D-16-0254.1

23
THERE’S LOTS WE
STILL DON’T KNOW
ABOUT NATURAL
AEROSOLS!

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) is

recognized as a strong emitter of
sulfate aerosols, such as DMS,
that may be an important
determinant of the overall radiation
experienced by corals, affecting
local properties such as cloud
cover and sea surface
temperature, and perhaps even Image source unknown

providing a bio-feedback on coral

bleaching.
See this link for more info 24
SOURCES OF
ANTHROPOGENIC
AEROSOLS!

• Fossil fuel combustion

and urban pollution Image source: Shutterstock.

sources, so aerosols are

co-emitted with GHGs.
• Biomass burning – both
deliberate and wild fires
(now contributes about
18% of anthropogenic C
emissions)
Image source: Shutterstock. Retrieved from:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/july/biomass-burning-climate-073114.html

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 REGIONAL EFFECTS: THE ASIAN BROWN CLOUD

Pollution from fires, eg home heating sources

that rely on wood, kerosene, or dung; and
industrial and vehicle emissions - it lingers
because of topography and regional
atmospheric circulation patterns.
See:
Ramanathan, V. et al (2005). Atmospheric
brown clouds: Impacts on South Asian climate
and hydrological cycle. Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences of the USA,
102(15), 5326-5333. Retrieved from:
https://www.pnas.org/content/102/15/5326
Image source: INDOEX. Retrieved from:
http://www-indoex.ucsd.edu/ 26
AEROSOL PARTICLES

The skies over Northern India (Dec

2001) are filled with a thick soup of
aerosol particles all along the
southern edge of the Himalayas, and
streaming southward over
Bangladesh and the Bay of Bengal.
Notice that the air over the Tibetan
Plateau to the north of the Himalayas
is very clear, whereas the view of the
land surface south of the mountains is
obstructed by the brownish haze.
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Image source unknown
FIRES IN CENTRAL
KALIMANTAN, INDONESIA

Image source unknown

28
Image source unknown
29
 Image source unknown

Aerosol optical depths (i.e. a measure of atmospheric transparency) for

black carbon (BC, x10) (a) in 1890, (b) in 1995, and (c) the change between
1890 and 1995; (d)–(f) the same measures for sulfates (SO4).
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TOPICS COVERED

• Aerosols and their important

role in CC
• Sources
• Impacts on radiative budget
• Geo-engineering the climate?

31
WHAT IT MEANS FOR CLIMATE – THE RADIATIVE BUDGET

‘Atmospheric aerosols counteract the warming effects of anthropogenic

greenhouse gases by an uncertain, but potentially large, amount….

Strong aerosol cooling in the past and present would then imply that future global
warming may proceed at or even above the upper extreme of the range projected
by the IPCC.’
See: Andreae, M., Jones, C.D. & Cox, P.M. (2005). Strong present-day aerosol
cooling implies a hot future. Nature, 435, 1187-1190. Retrieved from:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03671

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WHAT HAPPENS IF WE CLEAN UP ANTHROPOGENIC AEROSOLS?

Most developed countries and increasingly also developing economies are

implementing pollution control measures – GREAT…
But……
The residence time of tropospheric aerosols is very short
(~ weeks) compared to the decades-to-centuries lifetimes of GHGs.
And,
if the cooling influence of aerosols is currently offsetting some of the
warming influence of GHGs, any future change (reduction) to either
anthropogenic or natural emissions of aerosols could lead to an abrupt
perturbation to the climate.

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A REDUCTION IN
AEROSOLS MAY LEAD TO
ABRUPT WARMING…
Projected temperature change for two extreme
cases are shown: strong present-day aerosol
cooling (red line), and the case of no aerosol
cooling effect (blue line). The shading and the
yellow line represent the range and central
projection given in IPCC-TAR, based on the same
scenario used in these calculations
Source: Andreae, M., Jones, C.D. & Cox, P.M.
(2005). Strong present-day aerosol cooling
implies a hot future. Nature, 435, 1187-1190.
Retrieved from: Image source unknown
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature03671
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ARE WE REDUCING ANTHROPOGENIC AEROSOL EMISSIONS?

See this excellent article by Leon Rotstayn (CSIRO):

http://theconversation.com/masking-and-unmasking-of-global-warming-by-a
erosols-19990

Leon concludes that during the 21st century the developing world will follow
a path similar to the industrialized world, where aerosol emissions have
declined in recent decades.

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AEROSOLS AND GLOBAL
DIMMING
Recent observational evidence suggests that substantial
changes in surface solar radiation (SSR) also known as
global radiation have occurred since the 1950s.
The decadal variations in SSR cannot be explained by
changes in the luminosity of the sun. Therefore they must
originate from alterations in the transparency of the
atmosphere, which depends on the presence of clouds,
aerosols, and radiatively active gases.
Anthropogenic air pollution has led to substantial changes
in atmospheric aerosol levels over the past few decades.
BBC Video (informative but 50mins long) Image source: NASA. Retrieved from:
https://visibleearth.nasa.gov/images/62392/pollution-over-eastern-china
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 WHY IS DIMMING IMPORTANT?

Large scale global dimming suggests aerosols may well have softened the full
impact of global warming i.e. the currently observable impacts of global warming
could be a lot greater if it wasn’t for our smoggy, polluted skylines

Many climate models for global warming have failed to take global dimming into
account.

In other words, perhaps we have underestimated the climate sensitivity to GHG

emissions.

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Image source unknown
38
TRENDS IN SSR AND DIMMING

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Image source unknown
BLUE SKIES…

Blue skies have long been a rare sight in Beijing.

China has committed or offered funding for
102,000 MW of coal-based electricity, mostly in
Pakistan, South Africa, Bangladesh, and
Vietnam.
This is all part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative
that will use its own development model to help
"finance and build roads, railways, bridges, Image source: The Guardian. Retrieved from:
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/jan/14/china-pollution-controls

ports, and industrial parks abroad."

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 REALITY CHECK…

The depressing amount of global energy poverty, particularly

electricity deprivation, is largely forgotten in the rich West,
where we have all the energy that we need at our fingertips.

For example, as measured by per capita per year, over 3.5B

humans - nearly half of the world - use less than 10% of the
electricity that Americans do.

41
Air quality and climate policies, coal divestment campaigns, phase-out
announcements, declining costs of renewables and abundant supplies of
natural gas are all putting pressure on coal. As a result, coal’s contribution to
the global energy mix is forecast to decline slightly from 27% in 2017 to 25% by
2023.

But coal demand grows across much of Asia due to its affordability and
availability. India sees the largest increase of any country, although the rate of
growth, at 3.9% per year, is slowing, dampened by a large-scale expansion of
renewables and the use of supercritical technology in new coal power plants.
Significant increases in coal use are also expected in Indonesia, Vietnam,
Philippines, Malaysia and Pakistan

https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2018/december/global-coal-demand-set-to
-remain-stable-through-2023-despite-headwinds.html
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WHAT ABOUT AUSTRALIA’S ENERGY MIX?

The AES reports in petajoules (PJ). 1 PJ = 1 x 1015 joules.

One petajoule = 278 gigawatt hours
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TOPICS COVERED

• Aerosols and their important

role in CC
• Sources
• Impacts on radiative budget
• Geo-engineering the
climate?

44
 GEOENGINEERING – THROUGH DIMMING?

The following essay by Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen is on the possible

global albedo enhancement by stratospheric sulphur injections:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/t1vn75m458373h63/fulltext.pdf

And a more recent analysis:

Robock, A. (2016). Albedo enhancement by stratospheric sulfur injections:

More research needed. Earth's Future, 4, 644–648. Retrieved from:
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/Robock-2016-Earth's_Future.pdf

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 FIRST DIMMING EXPERIMENTS

• Scientists will attempt to replicate the climate-cooling effect of volcanic eruptions

with a world-first solar geoengineering experiment planned for 2019.
• The Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx) will inject calcium
carbonate particles high above the earth in an attempt to reflect some of the sun's
rays back into space.
• It will likely mark the first time the controversial concept of dimming the sun — more
scientifically known as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) — will be tested in the
real world.
• Existing understanding of SAI comes from computer modelling and also from
observing the natural effects of volcanoes, which create a haze of sulfate particles
that effectively cool the planet.
• The 1991 Mount Pinatubo eruption in the Philippines, for instance, caused the
average global temperature to drop by about 0.6 degrees Celsius in the following 15
months.
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 CAUTION…

At best, solar geoengineering only masks the effects of such

pollution rather than reducing it. Related worries are the potential
"termination shock" if the practice is ever ceased, unforeseen
side effects and the difficulty of governing it across borders

With all of this in mind,

the IPCC only gave very qualified approval to the practice in Octo
ber
, 2018.

47
 TAKE HOMES…

• Aerosols are minute particles created by both natural processes

and anthropogenic activities.
• Aerosols likely exert a strong influence on climate, although the
magnitude is uncertain
• Aerosol-cloud interactions are important but still not completely
understood.
• Anthropogenic aerosols (pollution) will likely be curtailed in the
future
• Ironically geo-engineering proposals involve injection of
aerosols in the stratosphere to cool the planet. 48
TAKE HOME MESSAGES (CONT.)

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THANK YOU
a.gabric@griffith.edu.au