Posted on 08/09/2002 1:56:56 PM PDT by cogitator
'Asian Brown Cloud' damaging agriculture: UN report
LONDON (AFP) Aug 09, 2002
The "Asian Brown Cloud" -- a vast haze of pollution stretching across South Asia -- is damaging agriculture, modifying rainfall patterns and endangering the population, a UN-backed study said Friday.
"There are also global implications, not least because a pollution parcel like this, which stretches three kilometres (1.86 miles) high, can travel half way round the globe in a week," said United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) chief Klaus Toepfer.
Toepfer told a London press conference that the pollution was caused by the burning of agricultural wastes and fossil fuels, and inefficient cooker emissions from burning wood, cow dung and other bio-fuels.
"More research is needed, but these initial findings clearly indicate that this growing cocktail of soot, particles, aerosols and other pollutants are becoming a major environmental hazard for Asia," he said.
A 200-strong team of scientists found that the strip of pollutants was reducing sunlight hitting the earth's surface by as much as 10 to 15 percent.
Although this study focused on the impacts on South Asia, scientists pointed out that the haze problem could be even worse in Southeast and East Asia, including China.
Global models suggested that the blanket may reduce precipitation over Northwest India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, western China and the western part of Central Asia by between 20 and 40 percent.
"One should note recent conditions," said the report. "There have been two consecutive droughts in 1999 and 2000 in Pakistan and the northwestern parts of India (and) increased flooding in the high rainfall areas of Bangladesh, Nepal and the northeastern states of India."
A 10-percent reduction in the amount of solar energy hitting the region's oceans in turn reduces the evaporation of the moisture which controls summer rainfall, the report said.
This may already be having significant impacts on agriculture and the study said that the haze may be reducing India's winter rice harvests by as much as 10 percent.
The pollution could also be leading to "several hundreds of thousands" of premature deaths from respiratory diseases, the report suggested, citing dramatic rises in deaths from air pollution in seven Indian cities.
The UNEP team included Veerabhadran Ramanathan of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in the United States, Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen of the Max-Planck Institute for Chemistry in Germany, and Ashesh Prosad Mitra of the National Physical Laboratory in India.
Their findings came just weeks before the World Summit on Sustainable Development, dubbed Earth Summit II, in Johannesburg.
The summit, from August 26 to September 4, will come 10 years after the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Most of the goals set at Rio have not been met.
Nice quick work by the FR admins.
'Asian Brown Cloud'
There’s usually one of these in my bedroom, the morning after Kung Po and fried vegetable dumplings.
The black soot emissions that are a large part of this cloud definitely have climate implications, potentially more than CO2. So James Hansen of the Goddard Institute of Space Studies suggested that they would also be easier to control, and the health benefits of controlling them would invite participation from India and China. For awhile back in the summer of 2001 it appeared that the Bush Administration was going to adopt this tactic, but September 11 intervened and not much has happened on this since.
OK, I knew that someone would make a comment like that. Perhaps "Asian haze pall" would have been a better choice for the headline.
Please make note: There is no mention of carbon dioxide, global warming or greenhouse gasses in this entire article. Why? Because it involves China, and China is exempt from Kyoto.
As I've stated a few times before, and as noted in a post above, the emphasis on CO2 in the Kyoto-lite (and useless) Protocol targets developed, not developing, countries. China and India should be encouraged to develop plans to control smoke/soot emissions. It would aid their citizens and probably do more to control potential global warming than the trivial CO2 reductions of Kyoto-lite.
True, but I don't think that's the reason why. One of the emphases of the upcoming conference on sustainable development is improving the environment. Citing the Asian pollution is citing a direct environmental hazard with public health implications. The unstated implication is that to control these emissions, the countries need better, i.e., cleaner, technology. So they are setting the stage for calls to transfer cleaner, less-polluting technology to developing nations cheaply -- i.e., they're angling for handouts.
Yes! We're not GENEROUS enough/too greedy/somehow our lifestyle causes Asians to burn trash for cooking fuel.
Then the pundits will feel morally superior, and we should be ashamed because we didn't clean our plates last night. (Eat that! Don't you know children are starving in [famine-stricken country])?
Take it with a grain of salt.
Americans will give up their SUVs if these folks will quit cooking their food on burning wood & cow dung.
Where is Ben Xi relative to Shanghai?
I've been to China once and saw similar conditions (I was there in the winter, when heating takes precedence, though I was in relatively warm coastal cities). China has a massive air pollution problem.
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