Small Volcano Eruptions Contribute to Global Warming Pause
22 November 2014 09:30 WIB
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - New study on volcano by scientists in Massachusetts Institute of Technology revealed that small explosion by volcano decelerates global warming. The study published on Geophysical Research Letters journal October edition reported that the deceleration has begun since 2000.
The lead researcher David Ridley said that this impact of volcanic activity has been overlooked because the planet-cooling particles, called aerosols, cluster below the reach of satellites.
"About one-third of the aerosols have been missed," Ridley told Live Science. "This is part of the larger puzzle everyone's been working on.”
Volcanoes blast sulfur dioxide aerosols into the stratosphere, where they cool Earth by blocking some of the sun's solar radiation and reflecting it back into space. Despite the greenhouse gas emissions continue growing, this aerosol’s activity has been contributing to the more slowly surface temperatures rising that is also called the "global warming pause".
In their study, Ridley and his colleagues found that aerosols account for cooling impact of between 0.09 and 0.22 degrees Fahrenheit (0.05 to 0.12 degrees Celsius) since 2000. They also found that noticeable cooling effects were sourced from eruptions that were significantly smaller than 1991's massive Mount Pinatubo outburst in the Philippines.
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