Atmosphere. Aerosols before pollution.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
Journal Article↗
Biomedical subjects
Meinrat O Andreae
Publications and source records attributed to Meinrat O Andreae.
Strong present-day aerosol cooling implies a hot future.
Atmospheric aerosols counteract the warming effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gases by an uncertain, but potentially large, amount. This in turn leads to large uncertainties in the sensitivity of climate to human perturbations, and therefore also in carbon cycle feedbacks and projections of climate change. In the future, aerosol cooling is expected to decline relative to greenhouse gas forcing, because of the aerosols' much shorter lifetime and the pursuit of a cleaner atmosphere. Strong aerosol cooling in the past and present would then imply that future global warming may proceed at or even above the upper extreme of the range projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
Journal Article↗
Atmospheric chemistry: fire and ice.
Explore the source record for details and available documents.
News↗
Formation of secondary organic aerosols through photooxidation of isoprene.
Detailed organic analysis of natural aerosols from the Amazonian rain forest showed considerable quantities of previously unobserved polar organic compounds, which were identified as a mixture of two diastereoisomeric 2-methyltetrols: 2-methylthreitol and 2-methylerythritol. These polyols, which have the isoprene skeleton, can be explained by OH radical-initiated photooxidation of isoprene. They have low vapor pressure, allowing them to condense onto preexisting particles. It is estimated that photooxidation of isoprene results in an annual global production of about 2 teragrams of the polyols, a substantial fraction of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate of between 8 and 40 teragrams per year of secondary organic aerosol from biogenic sources.
Journal Article↗