Sunday, July 28, 2013

Dark Snow


Back in February I did a piece  on World Voices about ice melt in Greenland, and linked to a blog by environmental scientist Jason Box. His theory is that the melting is accelerated by particle pollution from burning forests and fossil fuels - a fine layer of this soot settles on the ice and increases absorption of solar radiation.

Since then, the Guardian newspaper has picked up on the story (12 June 2013), and now he's featured in the current (31 July) edition of Rolling Stone magazine (subscription required), in an article by Bill McKibben entitled "The Ice Maverick".

The theory is comprehensible and plausible, whatever the debate about global warming generally. Professor Box is seeking crowdfunding for his research - please see the Dark Snow website here.

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2 comments:

A K Haart said...

It's a pity CO2 has dominated the climate debate, because there are other possible links between human activity and climate. Soot is certainly one.

Jasper Kirkby's CLOUD experiment is another area of interest.

Sackerson said...

Thanks for the CLOUD tip, AKH; have added a site to new bloglist called "Climate feeds".