Cleaner air could actually increase climate warming

Efforts to reduce air pollution could lead to more intense global warming due to the removal of airborne pollutants in the air that reflect some of the suns energy, researchers have found. Air pollution causes an estimated seven million premature deaths per year worldwide, so action is essential, especially in emerging and developing countries, which tend to be most affected, said Toshihiko Takemura, author of the study. It is widely used by news outlets for air pollution forecasts and is capable of predicting the mixing of aerosols in the atmosphere. The increase was deemed to be similar regardless of whether the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is the same as present levels or doubled. However, changes in the climate and surface temperatures over longer time scales showed that not only does the surface air temperature increase with a reduction in sulphate aerosols but this increase is even larger when carbon dioxide levels double.