Avi Blizovsky
Aerial photograph of floods in southern China
A new NASA study has revealed that large amounts of black coal particles and other polluting substances cause changes in the level of precipitation and temperatures throughout China, and are responsible, at least partially, for the trend to increase floods and prolong dry periods in these areas in recent decades.
In an article published in the September 27, 2002 issue of Science, Suravi Menon, who works at both NASA and Columbia University in New York, and her colleague James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute, write that black coal may affect the regional climate by absorbing sunlight, heating the air And therefore shifting atmospheric cycles and the water cycle.
They ran a computer model at the Goddard Institute Space Research Center, into which they entered the measurement data of the aerosols in the air from 46 ground stations across China. Menon and Hansen ran four series of computer simulations to monitor the effect of black coal on the water cycle over China and India.
In the four simulations, the scientists isolated specific factors such as sea surface temperature, the amount of greenhouse gases and aerosols and also analyzed how each of them affects the water cycle.
Of all the four simulations, the most obvious effect was the coal that hovered over southern China and which caused a trend towards an increase in the number of floods that occurred in southern China and increased drought in northern China, with great accuracy when the simulation matched the actual conditions over the past few years.
"If this interpretation is correct, then a reduction in the emission of black coal may help to weaken the rate of floods in the south and droughts in the north of China, and this is in addition to a health benefit," said Hansen. Now the two are conducting a similar study, this time on India.
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