Black carbon & climate change Part 1 (Snow & Ice)

I am now moving onto exploring climate change with a two part blog, This first will cover the impact  black carbon is having on snow and ice and the next is exploring impact on rainfall.

Key Effects

The key effects that BC has on Snow and ice is visualised in Figure 1.



Figure 1 Source 


- Wang Q et al 2011 found that between 2007 and 2009 , 90 % of the black carbon deposited in the arctic came from anthropogenic sources from January to March. Emissions from Russia during this period is a key source and most of BC is wet deposited.

- The mean climate forcing in the northern hemisphere from albedo reduction is  +0.3 W/m2 it is more than double as effective than co2 in changing surface air temperature.  A possible key player in the melting of permafrost, sea ice, snow, spring arriving earlier in the northern hemisphere

- Hansen J 2003 et al believes that soot is the largest contributor of melting of ice worldwide, it was found that in the alps black carbon levels can be as high as 100 ppbw and lead to a reduction of albedo by 10 %, a quarter of global warming could be down to the effect of black carbon on snow and ice.

- Baiqing Xu et al has found evidence of black soot aerosols that have landed on the Tibetan Glaciers have been one of the main factors of glacier retreat. The data from five ice cores found that black soot increased in the 1900s due to an increase in industrial activity in south & east Asia this coincided at the same time that the glaciers were retreating.
These glaciers are essential water storage helping to provide fresh water to over 1 billion people and are an important source of water realise to river systems such as the Indus and Ganges. The problem  is that these glaciers could disappear in the future threatening future fresh water availability in the area.