The effect of aerosol on on-going climate change

北海道大学低温科学研究所

低温科学

The cause for the global temperature change of the last one hundred years is investigated in light of the earth’s energy balance. The material used for the present paper is mostly observed at the earth’s surface or from the space. While the enhanced greenhouse effect steadily increased,the aerosol effect fluctuated as a result of the decadal variation in aerosol emission. A cooling period witnessed for 30 years in the middle of the 20th Century is considered to have been caused by aerosol effect that surpassed the enhanced greenhouse effect. This cooling episode coincided with the period of declining surface global solar radiation,which was subsequently coined as the Global Dimming. The Mie-scattering theory can however explain only half of the decrease. The remaining half is considered due to the increase in cloud, which has been confirmed by the observations at the surface and from the space. Thus the ongoing climate warming is caused by a delicate imbalance between the increasing rates of greenhouse gases and of aerosol. The turning point of the total radiation from the negative to the positive phases is estimated to have happened sometime in the 1970s, which corresponds to the end of the cooling period and the beginning of the unprecedented warming. In the near future it is possible that the temperature trend may turn negative, if the aerosol effect overtakes the greenhouse effect. The currently observed slowing down of the warming after 2005 may well be the result of the increasing aerosol.