Scientists are increasingly finding that black carbon aerosols in the atmosphere and their deposition on snow and ice-covered areas are having more of a warming effect than earlier thought. [Another reason for switching to renewable energies as quickly as possible! Maiken Winter]
Article by Zeke Hausfather; reposted with permission from the Yale Forum on Media and Climate change

Recent research has found that black carbon is the second largest anthropogenic contributor to warming, adding a climate forcing about 55 percent of that of carbon dioxide, and nearly twice that of methane.

In Arctic and Antarctic areas, black carbon deposition on snow and ice causes the surfaces to absorb more of the sun’s heat, and may be responsible for as much warming in the Arctic as all other anthropogenic forcings combined. Because of their short residence life in the atmosphere, [mehr...]