A new study claims Europe’s decades-long battle to reduce air pollution in its major cities, rather ironically, may be accelerating the Arctic ice melt.
While man-made global warming is the main driver of a warming Arctic, the study argues European regulations to cut air pollution has lessened the amount of particles to reflect incoming solar radiation. This causes warming to accelerate, according to researchers.
Scandinavian scientists wrote in their study Arctic “warms by 0.5 [degrees Celsius] on annual average in simulations with declining European sulfur emissions in line with historical observations, compared with a model simulation with fixed European emissions at 1980 levels.”
“We conclude that air quality regulations in the Northern Hemisphere, the ocean and atmospheric circulation, and Arctic climate are inherently linked,”the scientists wrote in their study published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/14/study-concludes-cutting-air-pollution-is-actually-causing-the-arctic-to-melt-faster/#ixzz42wJtNUnr
