“The Impact of Carbon Black on Climate Change: Understanding its Role in Aerosol Particles”

Nationalgeographic.co.id—Admittedly, that our industrialized society has released lots and lots of pollutants into the world, producing a black cloud on the horizon. Combustion in particular produces a mass of aerosols including black carbon which is very influential on climate change.

Even though this accounts for only a few percent of aerosol particles, carbon black is in fact very problematic. That’s because of the ability of black carbon in clouds to absorb heat and inhibit the ability to reflect heat from surfaces such as snow.

So it’s important to know how carbon black interacts with sunlight. Researchers have quantified the refractive index of black carbon to the most accurate level possible to impact climate models.

There are many factors driving climate change. Some are very familiar, such as carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels, sulfur dioxide from cement manufacture or methane emissions from livestock.

Black carbon aerosol particles, also from combustion, receive less news coverage but are very important. Aerosol refers to solid particles in the air. It can be liquid like dew, solid like dust or gas like a cloud.

Basically soot or black carbon is very good at absorbing heat from sunlight and storing it, adding to the heat of the atmosphere.

At the same time, given that dark colors are less effective at reflecting light and therefore heat, because carbon black covers lighter surfaces including snow, it reduces the potential for those surfaces to reflect heat back into space.

In the current atmosphere, black carbon is thought to make the largest contribution to global shortwave aerosol absorption.

In the climate simulations, the remaining large uncertainties in the shortwave absorption of aerosols dominate the predictive uncertainties of precipitation.

Black carbon is estimated to be the second largest contributor to positive effective radiation forcing among all greenhouse gases and aerosols over the North Pole.

Freshly emitted carbon black particles, for example from industrial exhaust gases, can quickly undergo internal mixing with other major aerosol components. For example, sulfates, organics, water through coagulation, condensation, and cloud processing to form black carbon-containing particles.