Publication Date:
2004-02-28
Description:
Urban air pollution and smoke from fires have been modeled to reduce cloud formation by absorbing sunlight, thereby cooling the surface and heating the atmosphere. Satellite data over the Amazon region during the biomass burning season showed that scattered cumulus cloud cover was reduced from 38%in clean conditions to 0%for heavy smoke (optical depth of 1.3). This response to the smoke radiative effect reverses the regional smoke instantaneous forcing of climate from -28 watts per square meter in cloud-free conditions to +8 watts per square meter once the reduction of cloud cover is accounted for.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Koren, Ilan -- Kaufman, Yoram J -- Remer, Lorraine A -- Martins, Jose V -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2004 Feb 27;303(5662):1342-5.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA. ilank@climate.gsfc.nasa.gov〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14988557" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
