Sources Of Climate- And Health-afflicting Soot Pollution Over South Asia Identified

In the journal Science Örjan Gustafsson and colleagues at Stockholm University and in India use a novel carbon-14 method to determine that two-thirds of the soot particles are from biomass combustion such as in household cooking and in slash-and-burn agriculture.

Brown Clouds, covering large parts of South and East Asia, originate from burning of wood, dung and crop residue as well as from industrial processes and traffic. Previous studies had left it unclear as to the relative source contributions of biomass versus fossil fuel combustion.

Combustion-derived soot particles are key components of the Brown Cloud in Asia. The soot absorbs sunlight and thereby heats the atmosphere while cooling Earth’s surface by shading. The net effect of soot on climate warming in South Asia is rivaling that of carbon dioxide.

The Swedish-Indian team managed to address the uncertainty of the soot sources by the first-ever microscale measurements of natural C-14 (half-life of 5700 years) of atmospheric soot particles intercepted on a mountain top in western India and outside SW India on the Hanimaadhoo island of the Maldives.

Their results, presented in the Science article, demonstrated that the brown cloud soot was persistently about two-thirds from burning of contemporary biomass (C-14 “alive”) and one-third from fossil fuel combustion (C-14 “dead”).

These findings provide a direction for actions to curb emissions of Brown Clouds. Örjan Gustafsson, a professor of biogeochemistry at Stockholm University and leader of the study, says that the clear message is that efforts should not be limited to car traffic and coal-fired power plants but calls on fighting poverty and spreading India-appropriate green technology to limit emissions from small-scale biomass burning. “More households in South Asia need to be given the possibility to cook food and get heating without using open fires of wood and dung” says Gustafsson.

The rewards of decreasing soot emissions from biomass combustion may be rapid and sizeable. Globally, soot accounts for roughly half the warming potential of carbon dioxide. While carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere respond on a sluggish 100 yr timescale to reductions in emissions, Brown Cloud soot particles only reside in the atmosphere for days-weeks raising the hope for a rapid response of the climate system.

Several additional positive effects would result from a reduction on Brown Cloud soot particle emissions. A recent report by the United Nations Environment Program, Atmospheric Brown Clouds: Regional Assessment Report with Focus on Asia (http://www.rrcap.unep.org/abc/impact/) outlines severe effects including melting of the Himalayan glaciers and weather systems becoming more extreme. The Brown Cloud is also having impact on agriculture and air quality in Asia.

Henning Rodhe, a professor of chemical meteorology at Stockholm University, vice-chair of the UNEP Atmospheric Brown Cloud Program and also co-author of the Science article, states that the report finds that 340 000 people in China and India die each year from cardiovascular and respiratory diseases that can be traced to human-induced emissions of combustion particles. “The impact on health alone is a strong reason to reduce these Brown Clouds” says Rodhe.