Latest Black carbon Stories

NEW YORK -- Bold new initiatives against global warming have come out of major cities around the world over the past few weeks - with the notable exception of Washington.Meeting in New York this month, dozens of big-city mayors from six continents competed to present the most ambitious plan for reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases that cause global warming.New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg touted his new 127-point plan to cut Gotham's emissions 30 percent by 2030. Los Angeles...

Pinpointing pollutant sources is an important part of the ongoing battle to improve air quality and to understand its impact on climate. Scientists using NASA data recently tracked the path and distribution of aerosols -- tiny particles suspended in the air -- to link their region of origin and source type with their tendencies to warm or cool the atmosphere. By altering the amount of solar energy that reaches the Earth's surface, aerosols influence both regional and global climate, but their...

SYDNEY, Australia -- The rate at which humans are pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere has more than doubled since the 1990s, according to Australian research, the latest report warning about the high rate of emissions accumulating in the atmosphere.Findings published by Australia's Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization also showed that 2005 marked the fourth-consecutive year of increased carbon dioxide emissions."To have four years in a row of above-average...

Who would think that something like dust in the air could trigger rain? According to a new NASA study, this is just what's happening over South Asia's Tibetan Plateau. Very small dust particles called aerosols blow in from desert regions and collect in the atmosphere over the plateau's slopes early in the region's monsoon season, helping trigger rainfall.A monsoon is a seasonal shift in wind direction that alternately brings very wet and then very dry seasons to India and much of Southeast...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court said on Monday it would hear an appeal by a dozen states, three cities and a number of environmental groups seeking to force the U.S. government to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars and trucks. The justices agreed to review a U.S. appeals court ruling that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency does not have to regulate the vehicle emissions blamed by most scientists for global warming.

By Deborah ZabarenkoWASHINGTON -- Ozone pollution in the Northern Hemisphere, churned out by factories and vehicles that burn fossil fuels, is a major factor in the dramatic warming of the Arctic zone, NASA climate scientists reported on Tuesday.This finding is surprising, since ozone has been considered a minor player in the study of global climate change, according to Drew Shindell, a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.Carbon dioxide has long...

By Palash KumarNEW DELHI -- A top British environmentalist said on Friday the developing world needed to spend at least $40 billion more every year to fight climate change.Last year was the warmest on record across the globe and it was unusually hot in the Arctic, U.S. space agency NASA said last month. Five of the hottest years since modern record-keeping began in the 1890s occurred in the past decade."If the developing world is to have extra resources necessary to modify their...

NASA -- Soot is normally something you think of at the bottom of your chimney, but it also gets into the air, and scientists have been finding it at the frozen Arctic. Soot gets into the air when fuel, vegetation and firewood are burned. When you watch the smoke and soot drift away from your chimney, you normally wouldn't think that it would drift to the North Pole and change the ice and snow there. NASA has been exploring how black carbon or soot affects the Earth's climate, by using...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The major source of potentially climate-changing soot in the air over south Asia is home cooking fires, according to a team of Indian and American researchers. The burning of wood, agricultural waste and animal manure for cooking is the largest source of black carbon in the air in that region, according to the team led by C. Venkataraman of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. "We therefore suggest that the control of these emissions through cleaner cooking...