EMBARGOED BY Nature FOR RELEASE ON Sunday, March 23, 2008 11:00
AM PDT Sunday, March 23, 2008 Black Carbon Pollution Emerges as
Major Player in Global Warming Soot from biomass burning, diesel
exhaust has 60 percent of the effect of carbon dioxide on
warming but mitigation offers immediate benefits Scripps
Institution of Oceanography / University of California, San
DiegoBlack carbon, a form of particulate air pollution most
often produced from biomass burning, cooking with solid fuels
and diesel exhaust, has a warming effect in the atmosphere three
to four times greater than prevailing estimates, according to
scientists in an upcoming review article in the journal Nature
Geoscience. Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego
atmospheric scientist V. Ramanathan and University of Iowa
chemical engineer Greg Carmichael, said that soot and other
forms of black carbon could have as much as 60 percent of the
current global warming effect of carbon dioxide, more than that
of any greenhouse gas besides CO2.