Not exact matches
The study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, showed that the production
of tar sands and other heavy oil — thick, highly viscous crude oil that is difficult to
produce — are a major source
of aerosols, a component
of fine
particle air pollution, which can affect regional weather patterns and increase the risk
of lung and heart disease.
The results show for the first time for a number
of natural compounds, which together account for around 70 per cent
of the biological hydrocarbon emissions, how much each compound
produces low - volatility products and how they can possibly affect the climate via
producing aerosol particles.
CLOUD shows that organic vapours emitted by trees
produce abundant
aerosol particles in the atmosphere in the absence
of sulphuric acid.
Secondary organic
aerosols, or SOAs, are created when hydrocarbon gases, given off by everything from pine trees to snow blowers, undergo a series
of chemical reactions in the atmosphere to
produce particles.
Airborne
particles in the form
of naturally occurring dusts and human -
produced aerosols can serve as ice nuclei, sites around which water vapor condenses into clouds.
The organic
aerosol particles that coat the toxic hitchhikers are wafted into the atmosphere through emissions from trees (like those that
produce the smell
of pine trees), and burning biomass and fossil fuel to form a semi-solid sap - like casing surrounding and protecting the
particle's payload from breaking down in the atmosphere.
We must remember that are a number
of aerosol sources that
produce particles of this size (about 100 nm or 0.1 micron), including anthropogenic ones.
Hansen's group estimates that
aerosols probably counteract about half
of the warming
produced by man - made greenhouse gases, but he cautions that better measurements
of these elusive
particles are needed.
In response, the IPCC added a cooling factor to its models
of the atmosphere, consisting
of tiny
aerosol particles produced by the emission
of sulfur dioxide from electric power plants.
These fires
produced huge amounts
of fine
aerosol particles and trace gases, which can potentially impact the climate and degrade air quality drastically at ground level.
As this happens, we would probably want a global fleet
of aircraft that spray sulfate
particles into the lower atmosphere to make up for the loss
of aerosols once
produced by coal plants.
Studying the atmospheric
aerosol particles, which impact cloud formation and
particles, above a pristine forests, researchers discovered that when left alone the Amazon acts as its own «bioreactor»: clouds and precipitation are
produced by the abundance
of plant materials.