Improving Air Quality By Scrubbing Aerosols from the Atmosphere Ended Up Accelerating Global Warming, Study Finds!

Chem 474 Blog Post Assignment

Claire Chen 



Scientific paper: https://acp.copernicus.org/articles/22/12221/2022/acp-22-12221-2022.pdf

News article: https://weather.com/en-IN/india/pollution/news/2022-09-27-scrubbing-aerosols-ended-up-accelerating-global-warming


The article I choose is from "The weather channel," that draws on the connection between atmospheric aerosols and global warming. The article was published this year in late September, which is relatively recent. It referenced a scientific paper titled "Robust evidence for reversal of the trend in aerosol effective climate forcing, " published in the Atmospheric Chemistry and physics journal by the European Geoscience Union. This paper closely investigated the trend of the number of aerosols in the atmosphere and how it directly or indirectly affects the global temperature, radiant, cloud formation, and ocean sea level. 

The scientific paper was collaborative work from multiple scientists around the globe. The main goal of this paper is to record the change in areoles since the year 2000. The scientific paper is more like a review article that collects data from hundreds of papers to establish a database on aerosol trends. It first draws attention to different types of aerosols trend since 2000, specifically on SO2, organic carbon, and black carbon. Overall, all three categories demonstrate a decline, especially SO2, due to the decrease in colas use in residential sector power plants. Additionally, the paper provides evidence that as the after-effects of the decline in the number of aerosols, such as the cloud droplet concentration decreases, radiation increases, and the ocean level also increases. Such evidence has closely contributed to the increased temperature in global warming. 

After reading the scientific paper, I compared it to the news article referenced. Compared to the 19 pages scientific paper, the news article from the weather channel only has 8 paragraphs, which I found is relatively short compared to other new articles. However, I still think the author did an excellent job summarizing and highlighting the main points of the scientific paper. The news article begins with an eye-catching title without being too click-baiting. Thus it soon caught my attention when I was browsing the news. It explains the background information well in informing the readers about the albedo. I also like how the authors describe aerosols as a "double-edged sword." Even though aerosols can cool the atmospheric temperature, that does not mean aerosols are beneficial to humans: they can still harm our health and well-being by developing lung cancer, asthma, and bronchitis. 

Nonetheless, there are still a few points I wish the news article could be done better. The scientists have done a lot of work collecting data and providing substantial evidence in the paper. Although the data can be complex for the general public to interpret, the authors can still show them and try to explain the data for the readers to better understand the scale. Also, the news article only discusses the correlation between aerosols and temperature. It neglects the part that showed the variation in cloud forming, radiant emission, and ocean sea level, all essential climate-forcing factors.

Overall, I will give this article a 7/10. I will credit this news article for presenting the correct information to the general public without exaggerating or misleading. It summarizes the article's key points and explains their intention to establish facts that aerosols do stop our earth from heating, but nonetheless, it is still harmful to us. On the other hand, I will take points off for neglecting almost 2/3 of the information from scientific papers and not providing enough statistical data for readers.  

Comments

  1. Sofia PerezOctober 10, 2022 at 3:38 PM

    Hi, Claire! Great overview of the news article and scientific paper you reviewed. I completely agree with you in giving the article 'points' for summarizing key points about the danger of aerosols to human health. On the other hand, as you stated it did neglect 2/3 of the information from the scientific paper which makes me almost want to dock more 'points' because it seems like a sort of laziness on the news article author's part for taking from a source that conglomerated a bunch of papers to prove their point effectively; it is not necessarily that this scientific review is not correct, it just makes it seem like the author may not have fully done his research. On the other hand, maybe this was a good thing, because some news article authors may be honed in on a few of the wrong pieces of scientific articles and then end up completely miscommunicating the big picture. Just some thoughts, what do you think?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Claire ChenOctober 10, 2022 at 9:36 PM

      Yes! totally agreed on how some authors tend to include too much information results in miscommunicating the big picture. I think the author in this particular news article did a good job in addressing the key points from scientific article (that is why I still give the article a rather high score). The 3 points I wish the author can improve is just to maybe include more details.

      Delete
    2. Claire ChenOctober 10, 2022 at 9:36 PM

      also Thank you for your comments Sofia!

      Delete
  2. Tarun SanikommuOctober 10, 2022 at 4:47 PM

    Hi Claire, I noticed that the study focused in particularly on emissions of SO2, black carbon, and organic carbon. I am curious if you think that this detail should have been reported in the Weather Channel report, and why. Personally, I think that including this detail would have been useful in order to narrow in on the specific aerosols under investigation in this study, but I could also understand if this could be unnecessary information for the general public to understand the point of this article.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Claire ChenOctober 10, 2022 at 9:45 PM

      Great question Tarun! I hope the author can at least include SO2 declines the most in numbers compared to other aerosols, and this is largely due to policy and legislative factors. Additionally, I hope the author can elaborate more on the harmful effects aerosols can do to humans as part of the background information. Thanks for the comment!

      Delete
  3. AnonymousOctober 10, 2022 at 7:53 PM

    Hey Claire,

    Great review! I personally thought this news article did an excellent job hitting the 'double-edge sword' concept of aerosols in a simple but effective manner. However, do you think you could expand on the mechanism of how these aerosols are declining in the atmosphere? In other words, why did the 'positive to negative' trend on aerosols make that switch recently, was it because of more sustainable global manufacturing practices? I think I may have gotten a bit bogged down in the lengthy article and failed to get the whole picture, but I am very curious to know exactly what is causing this!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Claire ChenOctober 10, 2022 at 9:50 PM

      I think the decline in aerosols has to do with legislative reason (for example, government restrict the use of coal which results in decrease in SO2 gas). The article did not really touch on the actual policy that limited the emission of aerosols but overall I think it is largely due to government legislature and other global agreements regards to our environment. Thanks for the comment Seth!

      Delete
  4. Veronica VanKoskyOctober 11, 2022 at 5:43 AM

    Hi Claire. I agree that the authors did a really good job of summarizing the key points of this article. However, you mention that more of the data could have been included and explained in the Weather Channel article since that was such a large portion of the work done by the researchers. What parts of their data do you think should have been included and how could the authors of the news article explained those in a way that was understandable and beneficial to the general public?

    ReplyDelete

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