Black Carbon a Significant Factor in Melting of Himalayan Glaciers

If current trends continue, we'll be the ones asking China and India for help to get things done. China already owns a significant portion of our debt. If the clowns in D.C. continue their irresposible spending and borrowing, we can commiserate with each other about the reckless over-consumption, greed and environmental injustice displayed by India and China as we work side by side in the rice paddies of the once great USA.

 

Black carbon's effects on ice melt and it's contribution to global warming has long been known, but I don't recall seeing any specific studies on the Himalayas before. The 30% number they attribute to black carbon seems to be in the same ballpark as previous estimates, IIRC.

Getting scrubbers on black carbon sources would go a long ways towards reducing glacial melt not only in the Himalayas, but the Arctic as well. Also, because black carbon does not remain in the air long (weeks), any reduction will provide near immediate results. Not only that, but local air quality will also significantly improve providing health benefits to the local residents.

The problem at least with the Himalayas is that one of the largest sources of black carbon are small cooking and heating fires fueled by biomass or dung.

There are probably billions of these fires burned by people who are very poor and getting clean, economical sources of fuel to replace those fires to all those people is a tough nut to crack. Solar powered stoves and solar powered LED lights are currently one of the best replacements.

The other large sources of black carbon are shipping (where ships burn high-sulphur fuel), diesel engines (easy to see from any dirty engine) and coal power plants.

 

NASA GISS/Jim Hansen and others published both ground-based and satellite-based analyses last year. The news writeups read such that Hansen et al. went looking there because it was warming substantially faster than existing models predicted (and because warming there is important). Some links:

NASA GISS: Research News: Black Carbon Deposits on Himalayan Ice Threaten Earth's "Third Pole"

Pubs.GISS: Abstract of Xu et al. 2009

I think the figure the NASA analyses use is half -- that particulates account for maybe half the warming there.

I've been hawking this issue and the arctic issue because I heat with wood, which is a relatively sooty source (e.g., compared to natural gas.) I think I'm OK, as prevailing winds put my soot out over the Atlantic. But its still a little unnerving to find such a steep downside risk to heating with biomass.

 

What is black carbon?

Some think that Industrial Agriculture contributes towards 40% of the carbon in the atmosphere.

 

Black carbon is soot. Hold something (nonflammable) over a candle flame and you will interfere with the end-stage combustion taking place in and above the flame. Soot is the result.

Any fire with incomplete combustion can make soot. Black exhaust from poorly maintained diesel is anothe rexample. Forest fires can also make much larger 'chunks', but they fall out of the atmosphere very quickly.

If you are curious about atmospheric carbon PeterP, it is mostly carbon dioxide. A wide variety of sources. There are many sources (internet and otherwise) that provide introductory information about this.

Drees talked about black carbon lifetime in the atmosphere, echoing a point made in the Menon interview. While this is true, black carbon that has fallen on a high-albedo snow or ice surface continues to have its absorptive effect until it gets covered by something else or the substrate melts away.