Soot - The warm blanket that makes the mountains sweat

Oh… so I got your attention? Great! Well I recently read an article published by NASA in which they summarized a conclusion they've come to draw when it comes to glacier retreat. By studying old and really old (ancient) cores of ice throughout history, before the industrial revolution and beyond, they actually found some interesting trends:

1) The coal emitted from big industrial factories all over the world of course polluted the air with coal particles - aka soot. These particles then spread with the winds and some of it landed in the cold, snowy parts of the world: the alps.

Bernese Alps 2012

Since black carbon is very sunlight-absorbing it can actually absorb quite a lot of heat in contrast to snow who deflects sunlight pretty good. The findings of black carbon was confirmed in the extracted ice cores and NASA scientist then actually concluded that the glaciers in the European alps had begun to melt more rapidly just because of it being covered with a black carbon blanket (so to speak). Maybe not that visible to the naked eye, but highly effective to the mean temperature on the snowy surface, thus effectively melting the ice away. Oops.

2) The main point here is that the industrial revolution is an anthropogenic factor to the risen mean temperature of the earth but it doesn't mainly come from the actual increase in mean temperature but rather from the carbon particles lying in the snow absorbing sunlight heating it up to melting degrees.

I'm posting this article since all this leads me to believe that we are one step closer to realizing our available options to actually make this climate issue a bit more bearable. By knowing what is causing our glaciers to melt (which is a serious issue) we can take stronger and more concrete measures to actually make a real difference. Since I find it highly unlikely that the mean temperature will drop in the nearest future, it feels good to know that the "end of glaciers" as we know it doesn't Only depend on that fact.

Additionally I think this article is highly relevant to this course since it shines new light upon the issue with the climate and what drivers are contributing to the glaciers melting. We all have talked about the carbon dioxide and its effect on the ozone. But in contrast to that discussion, this article actually redirect some of the "blame" to other factors than just an increase in global mean temperature.

What can we do to investigate this issue further? What is the next step? Is it possible to filter out the carbon emissions more effectively to halt this "carbon blanket"?

What are your hopes/reflections on this discovery?

Original article: HERE

- Image is borrowed from the original article