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Scientists measure Arctic soot in bid to slow global warming, oceans’ rise

BY RENEE SCHOOF
MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS
WASHINGTON — American scientists working on an island far above the Arctic Circle have been launching unmanned aircraft and digging snow samples to measure how soot helps melt Arctic snow and ice.

Satellite observations in recent decades show longer warm seasons and more melting throughout the region. One reason for this is black carbon, the basic component of soot. The black pollution absorbs light energy, increasing temperatures that speed melting.

The measurements over the past month on a Norwegian island of the Svalbard group, east of northern Greenland, could help show the most useful places to reduce soot – one part of broader efforts to slow Arctic warming and the rise in sea level that it will bring to coastal communities worldwide.

Different sources of black carbon have different chemical tracers, said Patricia Quinn, a chemist and co-leader of the team. The tracers, along with models of airflows, allow scientists to figure out where the soot came from.

“So we can say this is coming from forest fire burning in this region, or oil burning in this region, indicating that those are the sources that really need to be targeted and reduced,” Quinn said.

Black carbon stays in the atmosphere for days or weeks. Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, the main heat-trapping gas, accumulates in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Scientific studies say there’s no way around the need to reduce carbon dioxide from energy use, but black carbon reductions in the meantime would bring immediate benefits.

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