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March
5, 2007 Severe pollution
from the Far
East is almost certainly affecting the weather near you, says a Renyi Zhang,
professor of
atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M and lead author of the paper,
says the
study is the first of its kind that provides indisputable evidence that
man-made pollution is adversely affecting the storm track over the
Pacific
Ocean, a major weather event in the northern hemisphere during winter.
The
project was funded by the National Science Foundation and NASA. Zhang says the
culprit is easy to
detect: pollution from industrial and power plants in Using satellite
imagery and
computer models, Zhang says that in roughly the last 20 years or so,
the amount
of deep convective clouds in this area increased from 20 to 50 percent,
suggesting an intensified storm track in the Pacific. "This pollution
directly
affects our weather," he explains. "During the past few
decades,
there has been a dramatic increase in atmospheric aerosols –
mostly sulfate and
soot from coal burning – especially in "We compared these
deep
convective clouds from the 10-year period of 1984-1994 to the period
from 1994-2005
and discovered these storms have risen anywhere from 20 to as high as
50
percent." "It is a direct link
from
large-scale storm systems to anthropogenic (human-made) pollution." Zhang says the
problem is
especially worse during the winter months. Because of various
climate
conditions, the northern The Pacific storm
track carries
these polluted particles to the west coasts of "The Pacific storm
track can
impact weather all over the globe," he says. "The general air
flow is
from west to east, but there is also some serious concern that the
polar
regions could be affected by this pollution. That could have
potentially
catastrophic results." Soot, in the form of
black
carbon, can collect on ice packs and attract more heat from the sun,
meaning a
potential acceleration of melting of the polar ice caps, he believes. "It possibly means
the polar
ice caps could melt quicker than we had believed, which of course,
results in
rising sea level rates," he adds. The pollution from
the storm
tracks could also signify wild weather changes, he believes. "You might have more
storms,
and these storms might be more severe than usual," he says. "Or it could lead to
the
opposite – severe droughts in other areas. The Pacific storm
track plays a
crucial role in our weather, and there is no doubt at all that human
activity
is changing the world's weather."
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