"Brown Cloud" Particulate Pollution Amplifies Glaciers Melting
Jeopardizes Asian water supplies, contributes to Himalayan glacier melt
Himalayan glaciers are melting, affecting rivers that supply water to people living downstream.
Himalayan glaciers are melting, affecting rivers that supply water to people living downstream.
A new analysis of pollution-filled "brown clouds" over south Asia by researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif., offers hope that the region may be able to arrest some of the alarming retreat of such glaciers by reducing its air pollution.
The team, led by atmospheric chemist V. Ramanathan of Scripps, found that atmospheric brown clouds enhanced solar heating of the lower atmosphere by about 50 percent. The results are in a paper in this week's issue of the journal Nature.
The combined heating effect of greenhouse gases and brown clouds, which contain soot, trace metals and other particles from urban, industrial and agricultural sources, is enough to account for the retreat of Himalayan glaciers in the past half century, the researchers concluded.
The glaciers supply water to major Asian rivers, including the Yangtze, Ganges and Indus. These rivers are the chief water supply for billions of people in China, India and other south Asian countries.
"If it becomes widespread and continues for several more decades, the rapid melting of these glaciers, the third-largest ice mass on the planet, will have unprecedented effects on southern and eastern Asia," said Ramanathan.
