NASA: Reducing smog and soot can have immediate impact on climate change
A study indicating that cutting smog and soot has an immediate effect on climate change was released this week by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Sciences. The study comes at an interesting time, since the California Air Resources Board is voting today to dramatically regulate the soot emissions from heavy diesel trucks in the state.
According to the NASA study, cutting soot emissions will not only improve human health, but it will make an immediate impact on reducing climate change.
“This is no substitute for targeting carbon dioxide, which in the long run is the main contributor” to climate change, Drew Shindell, the lead author of the study said. “But if you want to have any effect in the near-term… [these] short-lived pollutants can have very large impacts.”
While CO2 gets the most attention from scientists concerned with climate change, since it has a lifetime of many centuries and is more widely studied, these other pollutants such as smog, soot, ozone, and nitrogen oxides, have a real effect on the climate and there can be immediate benefits through their reduction.
Climate models suggest that reducing these air pollutants can produce an immediate cooling effect on climate. This would be different from CO2 reductions, which have a long-term effect.
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