Posted on 06/29/2013 2:36:27 PM PDT by neverdem
Pollution during the 20th century appears to have suppressed North Atlantic hurricanes
The Clean Air Act, which has benefited breathing in many American cities over the last few decades, may have worsened the weather in some places.
New climate simulations suggest that reducing the level of atmospheric aerosol particles produced by human activity might have been the main cause of a recent increase in tropical storm frequency in the North Atlantic.
Aerosol levels have increased since the industrial revolution began, but there have been periods when emissions stalled or fell, such as the Great Depression, World War II and after clean air legislation was enacted in Europe and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s.
The climate simulations suggest that these periods of low emissions eventually increased tropical storm frequency. “It seems the Clean Air Act in particular has led to an increased number of hurricanes over the last decade or so,” says Doug Smith of Met Office Hadley Centre in England, a coauthor of the research published June 23 in Nature Geoscience.
Aerosol particles come from fuels burned in power plants and cars, as well as from natural sources like volcanoes, sea spray and dust. Aerosols can cool the Earth’s surface because they scatter the sun’s energy back into space and they seed brighter and more long-lived clouds. The authors suggest that high levels of aerosols in the past cooled the surface of the North Atlantic. This cool patch of the ocean shifted the position of a major air current, suppressing the formation of hurricanes.
This mechanism is credible, says Venkatachalam Ramaswamy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Princeton University. Ramaswamy finds the work impressive because it carefully incorporates information on aerosols’ effects on clouds. Such effects are emerging as a major influence on regional climate,...
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencenews.org ...
Sounds like a name the Weekly World News used to use.
Hey! “Ramaswamy” is my middle name!
More like “The Onion”.
Even Cleaner Air! Even Greater Depression!!
Yes, we can.
The intense heat wave in the western states this weekend is tying or breaking records that were set 100 years ago....way before government-grant-seeking “scientists” were around to yammer about “climate change” and “global warming.”
“Sounds like a name the Weekly World News used to use.”
The Weekly World News is still available on line. Just read an article about the dinosaurs on Mars, and also the pink lakes.
Cool. Now I want to go there!
How about all the Wind generation in west Texas has changed the jet stream and caused the drought?
Yeah, like there were no oil fires anywhere on earth, no cities burned to the ground, etc.
The law of unintended consequences, I see.
Thanks neverdem.
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