what is the effect of an increase in percentage of of dust particles in the atmosphere on the temperature of the earth
Answers
Last month, Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory hosted a conference on dust in the climate system as part of the NOAA funded Abrupt Climate Change in a Warming World (ACCWW) project. Most often, we think of dust simply as the stuff that accumulates on our windowsills, but those fine particles floating in the air play an important role in the global climate system.
Dust influences the radiative balance of the planet in two different ways, either directly by scattering and absorbing incoming solar radiation, or indirectly by changing the optical properties of clouds, themselves an important player in the climate system. Dust also contains iron, a limiting nutrient in many areas of the ocean, so when dust falls onto the ocean, it can act as a fertilizer for the growth of algae, or phytoplankton, which uses CO2. Dust not only affects climate, but also is influenced by it: its production, atmospheric transport and deposition are sensitive to climatic conditions.
During Earth’s history, dust has been strongly linked with climatic conditions: Ice cores and marine sediments tell us that the ice age world was much dustier than today’s world. Thus dust is both a driver and a passive recorder of climate change under different climatic regimes of the Earth’s past. However, its exact role in past climate change remains poorly constrained. Understanding the links between dust and climate in the past will be crucial to evaluate the future impacts of dust on the Earth’s climate system in a warming world.
Because dust affects and interacts with the climate system in so many different ways, a wide range of disciplines—atmospheric modelers, paleoclimatologists, geologists, ice core scientists, biogeochemists, chemical oceanographers, and many others – are required to evaluate its role and impact. The Lamont conference (DUSTSPEC: Dust records for a warming world), organized by Gisela Winckler (a researcher at Lamont and an adjunct professor at Columbia), Natalie Mahowald of Cornell, and Barbara Maher of Lancaster University, aimed to bring people from all those different, specialized fields together into one room.