{"id":77480,"date":"2025-07-20T07:48:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-20T07:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/77480\/"},"modified":"2025-07-20T07:48:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-20T07:48:16","slug":"reducing-pollution-may-have-unmasked-deeper-climate-risks-study-reveals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/77480\/","title":{"rendered":"Reducing pollution may have unmasked deeper climate risks, study reveals"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cleaning up the air we breathe may be a win for public health, but it also speeds up global warming. That\u2019s according to a recent study<\/a> published in Communications Earth & Environment, which linked the recent clean-up of air pollution in East Asia to the\u00a0acceleration of the climate crisis.<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the past 15 years, global warming has sped up \u2013 and until now, scientists weren\u2019t sure why.<\/p>\n

Co-author Dr Robert Allen<\/a>, climatology professor at the University of California, Riverside, said: \u201cWhen something like the anomalous, record-breaking warmth of 2023 and 2024 happens, climate scientists start to wonder if there\u2019s a factor we\u2019re missing. This study was our effort to figure out what that might be.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, a large team of international scientists analysed simulations from eight major climate models.<\/p>\n

They found that most of the acceleration in warming observed since 2010 was likely due to efforts against air pollution in East Asia.<\/p>\n

In the same period, China had implemented drastic air quality policies that slashed sulphur dioxide emissions by approximately 75 per cent.<\/p>\n

Dr Bj\u00f8rn Samset<\/a>, lead author of the study and senior researcher at the Centre for International Climate and Environmental Research in Norway, told BBC Science Focus why pollution has a cooling effect.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink back to a polluted or hazy day,\u201d he said. \u201cThe particles in the air stop some of the sunlight from reaching the surface and therefore act as a cooling sunshade.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith air pollution, we\u2019ve been doing this on a global scale for decades, and it\u2019s been counteracting some of the global warming from greenhouse gases.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samset explained that removing air pollution, as China has done, also removed some of this shading, \u201cand the artificial cooling we\u2019ve had for a while has started to diminish.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, the solution isn\u2019t to leave the pollution there. Allen said: \u201cAir quality improvements are a no-brainer for public health. But if we want to prevent the worst impacts of climate change, we have to cut CO2 and methane, too. The two must go hand in hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PollutionBefore China’s 2010 air quality policies, pollution was a leading cause of premature death in the country – Credit: Jackyenjoyphotography via Getty<\/p>\n

As well as cutting greenhouse gases, some scientists have suggested wackier solutions to slowing the climate crisis \u2013 such as putting fake pollution back into the air.<\/p>\n

Samset said this would involve \u201cadding particles to the stratosphere, or into clouds, where they can have the same effects as air pollution, but without (most of) the negative health impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n

To do this, he explained, a plane could spray gases into the air from 20km above the ground \u2013 far higher than a passenger flight \u2013 or scientists could inject sea spray or other natural particles into clouds.<\/p>\n

But co-author Prof Laura Wilcox<\/a>, a meteorologist at the University of Reading, told BBC Science Focus that such solutions wouldn\u2019t solve the problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust like air pollution, they\u2019re just masking the warming, not addressing the cause,\u201d she said, adding that we also lack the technology to make them possible.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other approach is to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere,\u201d said Wilcox. \u201cThis is called carbon capture, and we are already doing this, but at a very small scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

Solutions include planting trees and seaweed, using mechanical trees, and capturing CO2 directly from the air to be stored in rocks.<\/p>\n

But the main solution, said Samset, \u201cis to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, primarily through a shift away from the use of fossil fuels.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n

About our experts<\/p>\n

Dr Bj\u00f8rn Samset<\/strong> is a senior researcher at the Centre for International Climate Research, Norway. He is a physicist and science disseminator, with broad experience in atmospheric science and global climate modelling. Samset is studying precipitation and the role of air pollution in a changing climate, mainly through climate modelling.<\/p>\n

Prof Laura Wilcox<\/strong> is a professor of aerosol-climate interactions at the University of Reading, UK. Her research interests include the impact of air pollution on climate change and the climate impact of aviation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cleaning up the air we breathe may be a win for public health, but it also speeds up…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":77481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[746,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-77480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-unitedstates","12":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114884464064188453","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}