Daniel Murphy: One could look out the window of the airplane and see the air colored brown as you were flying, even though you’re hundreds or thousands of miles from the nearest big city.
Daniel Murphy is describing a haze over the Arctic. Murphy is a lead scientist on a project to study Arctic air pollution for possible links to climate change in the far north. He told EarthSky that scientists suspect that air pollutants – created by human activities – are creating Arctic haze and speeding up polar ice melt. Murphy’s team loaded a P3 aircraft with nearly 30 scientific instruments to measure the quantity and characteristics of fine particles, clouds and trace gases. In April 2008 they made six data-gathering flights from Fairbanks, Alaska to points north.
Daniel Murphy: One of the reasons for going to the Arctic is that when particles interact with sunlight it makes a difference when there’s a white surface underneath the air or if there’s a normal continental or oceanic dark surface.
That’s because dark particles in the air, such as soot, warm the atmosphere more if they are over a white surface. Soot on the snow makes the snow melt faster. The team also wants to determine the origin of the pollutants.
Daniel Murphy: It’s pretty clear there’s more than one source. They’re coming from a variety of both locations, different parts of the world, and types of sources as well.
Our thanks today to NOAA – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Our thanks to:
Daniel Murphy
Research Scientist
NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory, Chemical Sciences Division
Boulder, CO
Photo Credit: Marco Antonio Torres
Mr Daniel Murphy/Dan Kulpinski/EarthSky;
I, Agree with the facts,that we humans are causing pollution of the atmosphere and planet. ‘However’ It seems no scientist’s seem to be focusing on how much the Global War Machine adds to the Equation.It would seem, only common sense would be needed, to see that decades of war,with exploding bombs,warheads,DU,Phosphorus,Oxides,Radiation,fossil fuels by ships ,planes,rocket fuel propellents,rocket launchers,grenades,mines,Nuclear tipped weapons and penetrators,oil rig fires.pipelines on fire, burning cities and burning earth and everything else being used to kill the human population, is a MAJOR contributor to the equation of the problem of, not only the Haze over the
Arctic but the rest of the planet as well.
As a layman, It would seem also that, if dust from the Sahara can reach the united states and elsewhere, that all these war related aerosols that have been building up for decades, if not longer and have caused much more harm to the enviroment,atmosphere and human population than anything put together..on the entire planet!
Is there any Scientists, that you know of researching this part of the equation.?
For the Global warming activists/Scientists/Al Gore to put the blame of global warming on the families and people
of the planet saying we need to change lightbulbs and think about the fuel and energy we use Ok, that is true. I do not think many people have a problem trying to help in reducing energy use,recycling,cutting down on fossil fuel use BUT it seems pointless to me ,considering what I, have stated above.
Thank you ,
If you do know of anybody studying this,or, Is NOAA reasearching this area also ? please let me know.Myself in all my years have Never heard Mainstream media cover this point!