NASA Blames Diesel Soot in Global Warming
From Times Staff and Wire Reports
NASA scientists say soot, mostly from diesel engines, is causing as much as a quarter of all measured global warming by reducing the ability of snow and ice to reflect sunlight.
Their findings on how soot affects reflective ability, known as albedo, raise new questions about human-caused climate change from the Arctic to the Alps.
“Soot is a more all-around ‘bad actor’ than has been appreciated,” they wrote in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
In particular, they found soot is twice as potent as carbon dioxide in changing global surface air temperatures in the Arctic and the Northern Hemisphere.
