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In the article 'Sulfur Dioxide Initiates Global Climate Change in Four Ways', published by Elsevier in Thin Solid Films, Dr. Peter L. Ward of Teton Tectonics, USA, observed that the highest rates of volcanic activity in the past 46,000 years occurred at the same time as the highest rates of global warming after the last ice age. Global warming occurs when too much sulfur dioxide gas is released by volcanoes or by humans burning fossil fuels.
Ward then observed that the rate of increase of both methane and temperature during the 20th century tracked changes in the amounts of sulfur dioxide emitted by man. Human sulfur emissions peaked around 1980 as international efforts to reduce acid rain took effect. The rate of increase of methane in the atmosphere began to decrease by 1990. Increases in methane and global temperature approached zero by 2000 and have remained low until present.
"These observations make sense," Ward says, "when you realize that sulfur dioxide is changing the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere." A dirty atmosphere warms the earth. A clean atmosphere cools the earth. The atmosphere cleans itself by oxidizing greenhouse gases and other pollutants, causing their molecules to become larger and therefore to fall out or be rained out of the atmosphere.
When human sulfur emissions decreased in 1980, it took 20 years for enough oxidants to be generated to decrease the methane concentration enough to stabilize global temperatures. The decrease in sulfur emissions in the 1980s to reduce acid rain stopped global warming. Global temperatures have been nearly constant since 2000. "By reducing acid rain, we accidentally reduced global warming, however the good news," says Ward, "is that we now know how to reduce global warming. We can increase power consumption while decreasing sulfur emissions."
What about carbon dioxide? During the 20th century carbon dioxide has been increasing nearly linearly and has not yet levelled off in a manner similar to methane and temperature. Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas compounding global warming, but it is not the initiator of climate change. Ward used the concentration of sulfate ions in snow layers in Greenland to estimate yearly volcanic and human sulfur dioxide emissions over the past 100,000 years. Recent concentrations are similar to the highest concentrations observed during the few thousand years when the world warmed suddenly out of the last ice age. The rapid increase in recent concentrations cannot be attributed to increased volcanic activity but correlates closely with increases in known sulfur emissions from human burning of fossil fuels.
The groundbreaking research, published in Thin Solid Films, an international Elsevier journal which serves scientists and engineers working in the fields of thin-film synthesis, characterization, and applications can be found online via ScienceDirect.
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Global climate change, prior to the 20th century, appears to have been initiated primarily by major changes in volcanic activity. Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is the most voluminous chemically active gas emitted by volcanoes and is readily oxidized to sulfuric acid normally within weeks. But trace amounts of SO2 exert significant influence on climate. All major historic volcanic eruptions have formed sulfuric acid aerosols in the lower stratosphere that cooled the earth's surface ~ 0.5 °C for typically three years. While such events are currently happening once every 80 years, there are times in geologic history when they occurred every few to a dozen years. These were times when the earth was cooled incrementally into major ice ages. There have also been two dozen times during the past 46,000 years when major volcanic eruptions occurred every year or two or even several times per year for decades. Each of these times was contemporaneous with very rapid global warming. Large volumes of SO2 erupted frequently appear to overdrive the oxidizing capacity of the atmosphere resulting in very rapid warming. Such warming and associated acid rain becomes extreme when millions of cubic kilometers of basalt are erupted in much less than one million years. These are the times of the greatest mass extinctions. When major volcanic eruptions do not occur for decades to hundreds of years, the atmosphere can oxidize all pollutants, leading to a very thin atmosphere, global cooling and decadal drought. Prior to the 20th century, increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) followed increases in temperature initiated by changes in SO2.
By 1962, man burning fossil fuels was adding SO2 to the atmosphere at a rate equivalent to one “large” volcanic eruption each 1.7 years. Global temperatures increased slowly from 1890 to 1950 as anthropogenic sulfur increased slowly. Global temperatures increased more rapidly after 1950 as the rate of anthropogenic sulfur emissions increased. By 1980 anthropogenic sulfur emissions peaked and began to decrease because of major efforts especially in Japan, Europe, and the United States to reduce acid rain. Atmospheric concentrations of methane began decreasing in 1990 and have remained nearly constant since 2000, demonstrating an increase in oxidizing capacity. Global temperatures became roughly constant around 2000 and even decreased beginning in late 2007. Meanwhile atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have continued to increase at the same rate that they have increased since 1970. Thus SO2 is playing a far more active role in initiating and controlling global warming than recognized by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Massive reduction of SO2 should be a top priority in order to reduce both global warming and acid rain. But man is also adding two to three orders of magnitude more CO2 per year to the climate than one “large” volcanic eruption added in the past. Thus CO2, a greenhouse gas, is contributing to global warming and should be reduced. We have already significantly reduced SO2 emissions in order to reduce acid rain. We know how to do it both technically and politically.
In the past, sudden climate change was typically triggered by sudden increases in volcanic activity. Slow increases in greenhouse gases, therefore, do not appear as likely as currently thought to trigger tipping points where the climate suddenly changes. However we do need to start planning an appropriate human response to future major increases in volcanic activity.
Artikeln finns tillgänglig här:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tsf.2009.01.005