Global Dimming Definition

In the past 100 years or so the earth has faced several life ending problems, such as global warming, the nuclear issue, a collapse of our ecological system, or the relatively new issue, global dimming. All of these issues have one thing in common; none of them have been solved. This causes a compounding effect in which one issue can worsen another issue. However, global warmings effects are actually being suppressed by global dimming. This causes a huge problem.

If we somehow manage to get the effects of global dimming under control this will only worsen the effects of lobal warming, however, if we don’t solve the problem of global dimming sooner than later we’re going to see its effect only magnify exponentially.

Global dimming is the effect of humans releasing particulates such as sulfate aerosols into the atmosphere over the last 100 years. These particulates block some of the irradiance from the sun on the earth’s surface. This irradiance is what’s responsible for much of the evaporation of water, which, in turn, creates rainfall.

Therefore global dimming is causing a decrease in the amount of rainfall in some of the earth’s most arid places. Areas such northern Africa, where a lack of clean rinking water and irrigation is already a problem and if they get any dryer we could be looking at a disappearance of life on a biblical scale. Global dimming was first discovered by agricultural biologist Gerald Stanhill, who in the 1980’s, found that light hitting Israel was 22% less than there was in the 1950’s.

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Global Dimming 9/11

Then scientists found that pan evaporation, which is simply recording how much water is evaporating from a pan, was slowly decreasing in the 1990’s even though global warming should have been increasing evaporation. Ultimately, in the days after 9-11 when air traffic was grounded in the United States the average emperature rose by one degree Celsius, the largest average temperature rise ever recorded. As stated above the effects of global dimming could be catastrophic.

Water in the northern hemisphere is cooling causing a slowing of evaporation and thus possible drought and famine, but unfortunately that’s not all. The pollutants that ultimately cause dimming are also responsible for acid rain, smog, and respiratory issues in humans. It is also believed that if dimming continues to get worse the lack of sunlight could effect plants ability of perform photosynthesis, which would result n lower crop yields. It could also lead to rolling fires and devastating heat waves. However, we can’t Just go out and solve global diming and forget about global warming.

As stated above, it’s believed that if we some how reduce the effects of global dimming it will only increase the effects of global warming, thus the two must be taken care of simultaneously. If they aren’t, the total effects of either could end life on this planet. Beate Liepert, a leading scientist in climate change at Columbia University said, “We lived in a global warming plus a global dimming world and now e are taking out global dimming. So we end up with the global warming world, which will be much worse than we thought it will be, much hotter. The two issues are neither mutually exclusive nor contradictory. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, an atmospheric chemist at the Scripps Institution ot Oceanography, “The conventional thinking is that brown clouds have masked as much as 50 percent of global warming by greenhouse gases through so-called global dimming… While this is true globally, this study reveals that over southern and eastern Asia, the soot particles in the rown clouds are in fact amplifying the atmospheric warming trend caused by greenhouse gases by as much as 50 percent. Efforts are being made to solve these issues, but there are no easy solutions. Basically the only way to fix the problem of global dimming is to cut down on pollution entering the atmosphere. At the same time we must stop the pumping of green house gasses to spur the ever present global warming. There is no one quick fix, it’s going to take self-control. People and corporations are going to have to cut back on the use of fossil fuels as well as the eneration of particles. For that to happen governments are going to have to come together and create more regulations.

It’s a slow process that will have to be put in place as soon as possible because there is only a finite amount of time left. In conclusion global dimming is Just another one of many issues facing planet earth that has to be taken care of sooner than later. The media tends to focus on global warming as the more imminent threat to humans but global dimming is Just as dangerous. Changes will have to be made in every persons day to day life for serious mprovements to be seen. Until that happens the earth will continue to spiral down a dangerous path.

Work Cited “Global Dimming”. BSC. Retrieved 02 Dec. 2013. National Science Foundation (2007-08-01). “”Brown Cloud” Particulate Pollution Amplifies Global Warming”. Retrieved 02 Dec. 2013. Keneth L. Denman and Guy Brasseur, et al. (2007). “Couplings between changes in Climate System and the Biogeochemistry, 7. 5. 3” (PDF). IPCC. Retrieved 02 Dec. 2013. Liepert, Beate. “RealClimate: Global Dimming and Climate Models. ” RealClimate RSS. N. p. , 17 Apr. 2006. web. Retrieved 02 Dec. 2013.