The environment effects of black carbon, commonly referred to as soot outside of the scientific world, are no secret to the world– it has been placed second only to carbon dioxide in its contribution to global warming. However, soot has recently suggested to be the missing piece in explaining the glacial retreat observed even before the earth’s temperature was observed as rising.
The Little Ice Age, starting around the year 1350, was a period of extensive cooling observed up until the late nineteenth century. In this time frame, alpine glaciers documented (mainly in the Italian-Swiss Alps) were thought to be twice in volume compared to their present sizes. However, those studying the glaciers noted that the large ice forms began to recede around 1850, despite theoretical evidence and calculations based on the alpine climate records suggesting that the glaciers should not have stopped growing until sixty years later, in 1910. Clearly, some factor had not been considered into their model of the glacial patterns– and for once, global warming could not be blamed.
Researchers seeking the answer to the quandary have recently pegged soot as the guilty party. Due to the sudden rise in steam locomotives, factory smokestacks, coal-heated homes, and massed burning of any sort of biomass (i.e. forests) from the recent industrial revolution, an enormous amount of black carbon was released into the environment and atmosphere, eventually settling around the mountains and glaciers. Due to the albedo effect, the dark soot deposition would cause an increased absorption of sunlight and its heat, leading to the accelerated melting rates of the icy structures that were observed.
Originally, scientists did not expect that enough soot would have deposited to create such an effect on the glaciers, but newly examined ice cores drilled in the alps proved otherwise. When the given amount of soot discovered was factored into the previous glacier models, behaviours reasonably close to the known patterns.
The newfound discovery is a great step in documenting the history of the alps, but unfortunately many other mountain ranges and glacial areas have not had the same extensive documentation as the Alps. While other ranges, such as the Himalayas, could perhaps also have fallen subject to the same soot-induced glacial retreat, as India and China would have also contributed large amounts of black carbon into the area, not enough empirical evidence is available in these areas to properly confirm the hypothesis.
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