WHAT IS GLOBAL DIMMING?
THIS COULD MAKE GLOBAL WARMING LOOK TIMID IN LIGHT OF RECENT FINDINGS BASED ON HARD DATA.THE BOUGHT AND PAID FOR RHETORIC AND SPECULATION ASSOCIATED WITH 'GLOBAL WARMING' IS THANKFULLY NOT PRESENT IN GLOBAL DIMMING RESEARCH.
We are all seeing rather less of the Sun. Scientists looking at five decades of sunlight measurements have reached the disturbing conclusion that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface has been gradually falling. Paradoxically, the decline in sunlight may mean that global warming is a far greater threat to society than previously thought, but not because of Co2 greenhouse gas effect. The culprit is airborne particulate matter. This visible air pollution caused primarily by jet engines and most anything that burns, reflects sunlight back into space, preventing it reaching the surface. A plane like a Boeing 747 uses approximately 1 gallon of fuel (about 4 liters) every second. Over the course of a 10-hour flight, it will burn 36,000 gallons (150,000 liters). But the pollution also changes the optical properties of clouds. Because the particles seed the formation of water droplets, polluted clouds contain a larger number of droplets than unpolluted clouds. Recent research shows that this makes them more reflective than they would otherwise be, again reflecting the Sun's rays back into space. Like enormous clouds of volcanic ash, some forms of air pollution can significantly reduce the amount of sunlight reaching Earth's surface and lower temperatures. Climate researcher James Hansen estimates that "global dimming" is cooling our planet by more than a degree Celsius (1.8°F) and fears that as we curb these types of air pollution, global warming may escalate to a point of no return. Here, trace the historic events that lead to our understanding of global dimming.
What is "global dimming” and how can it counter global warming? See in this documentary how this critical phenomenon was discovered.
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