Future changes in Beijing haze events under different shared socioeconomic pathways

Author(s):  
Liang Guo ◽  
Laura Wilcox ◽  
Massimo Bollasina ◽  
Steven Turnock ◽  
Marianne Lund ◽  
...  

<p>The occurrence of severe haze events remains a serious problem in Beijing. Previous studies suggested that the frequency of weather patterns conducive to haze may increase with global warming. The new Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) cover a wide range of uncertainties in aerosol and greenhouse gases emissions. Global and Chinese aerosol emissions are projected to decrease in most SSPs, while increases in greenhouse gases and global warming will continue for the rest of the century. The future, therefore, remains unclear.</p><p>We quantified the air pollution over Beijing and associated weather patterns using multiple indices calculated from the SSPs</p><p>We show that the occurrence of weather patterns conducive to the formation of haze significantly increases by the end of the century due to increases in greenhouse gases. Aerosol reductions also cause an increase in their occurrence, but reduce the severity of haze, and overall reducing aerosol emissions will be beneficial.</p>

Author(s):  
Mark Maslin

‘Evidence for climate change’ considers both past and recent climate change through changes in temperature, precipitation, and relative global sea level to show that significant changes in climate have been recorded. These include a 0.85°Celsius (C) increase in average global temperatures over the last 150 years, sea-level rise of over 20 cm, significant shifts in the seasonality and intensities of precipitation, changing weather patterns, and significant retreat of Arctic sea ice and nearly all continental glaciers. The IPCC 2013 report states that the evidence for global warming is unequivocal and that there is very high confidence that this warming is due to human emissions of greenhouse gases.


Author(s):  
Bjørn H. Samset

Among the factors that affect the climate, few are as diverse and challenging to understand as aerosols. Minute particles suspended in the atmosphere, aerosols are emitted through a wide range of natural and industrial processes, and are transported around the globe by winds and weather. Once airborne, they affect the climate both directly, through scattering and absorption of solar radiation, and indirectly, through their impact on cloud properties. Combining all their effects, anthropogenic changes to aerosol concentrations are estimated to have had a climate impact over the industrial era that is second only to CO2. Their atmospheric lifetime of only a few days, however, makes their climate effects substantially different from those of well-mixed greenhouse gases. Major aerosol types include sea salt, dust, sulfate compounds, and black carbon—or soot—from incomplete combustion. Of these, most scatter incoming sunlight back to space, and thus mainly cool the climate. Black carbon, however, absorbs sunlight, and therefore acts as a heating agent much like a greenhouse gas. Furthermore, aerosols can act as cloud condensation nuclei, causing clouds to become whiter—and thus more reflecting—further cooling the surface. Black carbon is again a special case, acting to change the stability of the atmosphere through local heating of the upper air, and also changing the albedo of the surface when it is deposited on snow and ice, for example. The wide range of climate interactions that aerosols have, and the fact that their distribution depends on the weather at the time and location of emission, lead to large uncertainties in the scientific assessment of their impact. This in turn leads to uncertainties in our present understanding of the climate sensitivity, because while aerosols have predominantly acted to oppose 20th-century global warming by greenhouse gases, the magnitude of aerosol effects on climate is highly uncertain. Finally, aerosols are important for large-scale climate events such as major volcanoes, or the threat of nuclear winter. The relative ease with which they can be produced and distributed has led to suggestions for using targeted aerosol emissions to counteract global warming—so-called climate engineering.


Author(s):  
A. S. Maheshwari

Environmental pollution states the toxification by different forms of pollutants in the surroundings. This causes the natural system imbalance and affects the life on earth in different ways. The emissions of pollutants into air result in climate changes. The rising levels of CO2 and other air-polluting gases increase the greenhouse effect which results in temperature elevations and affects global weather patterns. Bill Gates also warned “Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved; it deserves to be a huge priority”. Though climate change and air pollution are closely linked, these are treated as separate problems. Hence, it is aimed to understand the aspects of association between climate change and air pollution in this chapter with the objectives: (i) To know the basics of climate change and air pollution, (ii) To review the active background studies on climate change as well as on air pollution, (iii) To identify the issues, controversies, problems which include the effects of global warming and greenhouse gases followed by the types of air pollutants and its harmful effects, (iv) To find the solutions and recommendations, the discussions are made on climate laws and policies, (v) To retrieve, analyze and store the climate change related information, the description about models, tools and databases are given, (vi) To have a flawless insights on the association of climate change and air pollution, (vii) To exemplify species indicators for the assessment of the effect of air pollution on climate change are also included. As Bernie Sanders said “Climate change is a planetary crisis. We've got to act, and we have to act boldly”.


Author(s):  
Gabriela Maria Filip ◽  
◽  
Valeria Mirela Brezoczki ◽  

Global warming and climate change represent the most important problems of society. These are manly caused by air pollution and the increase of greenhouse gases. This paper presents a synthetic analysis of the evolution of greenhouse gases in the county of Maramureş over a period of 10 years, between 2006 and 2015, based on the data taken from the Environmental Protection Agency Maramureş, regarding the main greenhouse gases at county level, as well as the emission sources and their effects.


2018 ◽  
Vol 235 ◽  
pp. 00011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimír Ľupták ◽  
Martina Hlatká ◽  
Rudolf Kampf

Currently, the influence of transport on the environment represents a serious problem, especially in terms of energy consumption and generation of gases causing global warming. The contribution on the topic of comparing energy consumption and greenhouse gases emissions on relation Brno – Jihlava thus aims to describe generation of emissions in the current types of transport and their calculation according to EN 16258:2012. The results of the calculations will be expressed in emission intensity units to the number of passengers transported. The EN 16258:2012 calculations will be applied to passenger rail transport. In particular, energy intensity and generation of greenhouse gases will be monitored in relation to travelling the distance between Brno and Jihlava.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Camilla W. Stjern ◽  
Bjørn H. Samset ◽  
Olivier Boucher ◽  
Trond Iversen ◽  
Jean-François Lamarque ◽  
...  

Abstract. The diurnal temperature range (DTR), or difference between the maximum and minimum temperature within one day, is one of many climate parameters that affects health, agriculture and society. Understanding how DTR evolves under global warming is therefore crucial. Since physically different drivers of climate change, such as greenhouse gases and aerosols, have distinct influences on global and regional climate, predicting the future evolution of DTR requires knowledge of the effects of individual climate forcers, as well as of the future emissions mix, in particular in high emission regions. Using global climate model simulations from the Precipitation Driver and Response Model Intercomparison Project (PDRMIP), we investigate how idealized changes in the atmospheric levels of a greenhouse gas (CO2) and aerosols (black carbon and sulfate) influence DTR, globally and in selected regions. We find broad geographical patterns of annual mean change that are similar between climate drivers, pointing to a generalized response to global warming which is not defined by the individual forcing agents. Seasonal and regional differences, however, are substantial, which highlights the potential importance of local background conditions and feedbacks. While differences in DTR responses among drivers are minor in Europe and North America, there are distinctly different DTR responses to aerosols and greenhouse gas perturbations over India and China, where present aerosol emissions are particularly high. BC induces substantial reductions in DTR, which we attribute to strong modelled BC-induced cloud responses in these regions.


2022 ◽  
pp. 199-217
Author(s):  
A. S. Maheshwari

Environmental pollution states the toxification by different forms of pollutants in the surroundings. This causes the natural system imbalance and affects the life on earth in different ways. The emissions of pollutants into air result in climate changes. The rising levels of CO2 and other air-polluting gases increase the greenhouse effect which results in temperature elevations and affects global weather patterns. Bill Gates also warned “Climate change is a terrible problem, and it absolutely needs to be solved; it deserves to be a huge priority”. Though climate change and air pollution are closely linked, these are treated as separate problems. Hence, it is aimed to understand the aspects of association between climate change and air pollution in this chapter with the objectives: (i) To know the basics of climate change and air pollution, (ii) To review the active background studies on climate change as well as on air pollution, (iii) To identify the issues, controversies, problems which include the effects of global warming and greenhouse gases followed by the types of air pollutants and its harmful effects, (iv) To find the solutions and recommendations, the discussions are made on climate laws and policies, (v) To retrieve, analyze and store the climate change related information, the description about models, tools and databases are given, (vi) To have a flawless insights on the association of climate change and air pollution, (vii) To exemplify species indicators for the assessment of the effect of air pollution on climate change are also included. As Bernie Sanders said “Climate change is a planetary crisis. We've got to act, and we have to act boldly”.


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