{"id":14686,"date":"2024-01-26T12:49:02","date_gmt":"2024-01-26T12:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/26\/the-world-successfully-tackled-a-dangerous-pollutant-but-did-it-accidentally-warm-the-planet-in-the-process\/"},"modified":"2024-01-26T12:49:02","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T12:49:02","slug":"the-world-successfully-tackled-a-dangerous-pollutant-but-did-it-accidentally-warm-the-planet-in-the-process","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/2024\/01\/26\/the-world-successfully-tackled-a-dangerous-pollutant-but-did-it-accidentally-warm-the-planet-in-the-process\/","title":{"rendered":"The world successfully tackled a dangerous pollutant. But did it accidentally warm the planet in the process?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The huge cargo ships that criss-cross the world\u2019s oceans sometimes leave \u201ctracks\u201d in their wake \u2014 long, wispy clouds that trail through the sky, lasting for a handful of days at most before disappearing. <\/p>\n

These ghost clouds look beautiful, but they are a visible sign of deadly air pollution. They form when tiny sulfur dioxide particles belched out from ships\u2019 smokestacks interact with water vapor in the atmosphere, creating low-lying, highly reflective clouds. <\/p>\n

Ships\u2019 sulfur pollution causes tens of thousands of premature deaths a year. But in what may seem a cruel twist \u2014 especially from an industry responsible for around 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions \u2014 this type <\/strong>of <\/strong>pollution also helps cool the planet by brightening clouds and reflecting the sun\u2019s energy away from the Earth. <\/p>\n

So, when in 2020 the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the United Nations body regulating shipping, slashed sulfur content permitted in ships\u2019 fuel by 80%, it was a victory for human health. An\u00a0estimated 30,000 premature deaths will now be avoided each year. <\/p>\n

But it was \u201ca silver cloud with a dark lining,\u201d said Michael Diamond, assistant professor at Florida State University\u2019s Department of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Science. The regulations ended a vast, accidental geoengineering project. Ship tracks reduced sharply, and with them, the cooling impact of this pollution. <\/p>\n

As global temperatures soar, it has left scientists\ufeff trying to unpick whether these shipping regulations may be inadvertently fueling an alarming acceleration of global warming \u2014 a controversial hypothesis that has divided some experts. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a debate made more urgent by last year\u2019s record-breaking heat. \u201cScientists are amazed at the outlier that 2023 was,\u201d said Olaf Morgenstern, a scientist at the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research in New Zealand. <\/p>\n

The <\/strong>heat was <\/strong>especially pronounced in some parts of the oceans, where water temperatures in areas including the North Atlantic shot wildly off the charts. <\/p>\n

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Scientists say the surge in global temperature was primarily driven by two factors: the impacts of El Ni\u00f1o, a natural climate phenomenon that tends to have a global heating impact, combined with the backdrop of long-term global warming caused by burning fossil fuels. <\/p>\n

But some have speculated <\/strong>the <\/strong>heat spiked so abnormally high that other influences may also be at play. Theories include a lack of sunlight-reflecting dust from the Sahara, a change in wind patterns, and the January 2022 eruption of the Hunga Tonga underwater volcano, which injected enough planet-warming water vapor into the atmosphere to fill 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools. <\/p>\n

Of all of the theories, however, the impact of shipping regulations is swiftly becoming one of the most discussed. Scientists have long known that reducing this particle pollution\ufeff would have a warming effect, but by how much \u201cis where the controversy starts,\u201d Morgenstern said. <\/p>\n

In November, the prominent climate <\/strong>scientist James Hansen co-authored a paper which argued the curtailing of <\/strong>shipping pollution was the main driver of an alarming acceleration in global warming that goes beyond what climate models have predicted. <\/p>\n

But other scientists have urged caution, not least because the relationship between pollution particles and <\/strong>clouds is extremely complex. Unraveling it is \u201cone of the biggest challenges in climate science,\u201d Diamond said. <\/p>\n

Piers Forster, a professor of climate physics at Leeds University in the UK, said the reduction in shipping pollution is likely <\/strong>to have a very small warming influence. <\/p>\n

According to Forster\u2019s calculations, the regulations will increase global warming by around 0.01 degrees Celsius, which could grow to about 0.05 degrees by 2050 \u2014 equivalent to around two additional years of human-caused emissions. <\/p>\n

However, he added, the uncertain effect of the pollution on clouds means there\u2019s a possibility the warming impact could be much larger \u2014 an additional 0.1 or 0.2 degrees by 2050. <\/p>\n

Diamond, whose own work estimates the regulations will bring levels of warming over the next few decades of between 0.05 and 0.1 degrees, said this heat won\u2019t be \u201ca showstopper\u201d but is important. Every fraction of a degree matters when the world is hurtling towards levels of warming to which even <\/strong>humans will increasingly struggle to adapt. <\/p>\n

\u201cBut I think it could have mattered quite a bit more regionally,\u201d he said. Shipping is unevenly distributed, with much of it concentrated between Europe, North America and Asia, meaning air pollution impacts are also likely to be skewed. <\/p>\n

In areas such as the North Atlantic, where temperatures soared several degrees above usual in 2023, Diamond said, \u201cshipping is a decent explanation for part of why that was so warm.\u201d <\/p>\n

There are only a few years of data so far, and it will take time for scientists to unravel the exact impact of the fall in shipping pollution. <\/p>\n

But it is clear that particle pollution from all sources, including burning fossil fuels, has had a cooling impact. Without it, the world would be about 0.4 degrees hotter, according to a 2021 report from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. And pollution decreases in the future could have a big impact. <\/p>\n

Annica Ekman, professor of meteorology at Stockholm University in Sweden, said her research has found that decreases in human-caused particle pollution between 2015 and 2050 could warm the planet as much as 0.5 degrees. <\/p>\n

But this is not an argument against cutting air pollution, Diamond said, it\u2019s an argument for tackling it alongside reducing carbon emissions. <\/p>\n

The cooling impact of air pollution is far outweighed by the heating impact of burning fossil fuels. It\u2019s when air pollution is tackled without also reducing carbon emissions, that \u201cwe can get into trouble,\u201d Diamond said. <\/p>\n

That is what\u2019s happening in this shipping industry, where huge container vessels are still propelled across the oceans by hundreds of millions of tons of fossil fuels. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe must not forget why the regulation exists,\u201d Forster said. \u201cIt is there to save lives from air pollution.\u201d While reducing this pollution will have a small warming impact, immediate action to reduce emissions will both slash the rate of global warming and improve air quality, he said. We are not \u201con some doomed trajectory,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n\n

This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The huge cargo ships that criss-cross the world\u2019s oceans sometimes leave \u201ctracks\u201d in their wake \u2014 long, wispy clouds that trail through the sky, lasting for a handful of days at most before disappearing. These ghost clouds look beautiful, but they are a visible sign of deadly air pollution. They form when tiny sulfur dioxide <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":14687,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14686","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}