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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (329624)	3/21/2007 6:37:52 AM
From: Taro	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1586786

Global 'Sunscreen' Has Likely Thinned, Report NASA Scientists Science Daily A new NASA study has found that an important counter-balance to the warming of our planet by greenhouse gases -- sunlight blocked by dust, pollution and other aerosol particles -- appears to have lost ground. The average amount of dust, pollution and other aerosol particles in the atmosphere has dropped since the 1990s. Global averages were relatively low in the period 2002 to 2005, shown here (highest aerosol levels in light blue, lowest in purple). (Credit: NASA Global Aerosol Climatology Project) The thinning of Earth's "sunscreen" of aerosols since the early 1990s could have given an extra push to the rise in global surface temperatures. The finding, published today in the journal Science, may lead to an improved understanding of recent climate change. In a related study published last week, scientists found that the opposing forces of global warming and the cooling from aerosol-induced "global dimming" can occur at the same time. ............ The resulting data show large, short-lived spikes in global aerosols caused by major volcanic eruptions in 1982 and 1991, but a gradual decline since about 1990. By 2005, global aerosols had dropped as much as 20 percent from the relatively stable level between 1986 and 1991. The NASA study also sheds light on the puzzling observations by other scientists that the amount of sunlight reaching Earth's surface, which had been steadily declining in recent decades, suddenly started to rebound around 1990. sciencedaily.com