A NASA News release on March 13, 2006 has reported on a major climate forcing effect due to ozone. It has been identified as explaining a significant portion of the Arctic temperature increases over the last decade. The NASA report is titled ” Links ‘Smog’ to Arctic Warming”, and states,
“NASA scientists have found that a major form of global air pollution involved in summertime “smog” has also played a significant role in warming the Arctic……According to this new research, ozone was responsible for one-third to half of the observed warming trend in the Arctic during winter and spring. Ozone is transported from the industrialized countries in the Northern Hemisphere to the Arctic quite efficiently during these seasons. “
This study is based on a paper by Drew Shindell and colleagues of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) that has been accepted for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres. The paper itself is not yet available on-line, however, it is a very important contribution as it further shows the complexity of the climate system, as has been repeatedly reported on the Climate Science weblog, and was summarized by the 2005 National Research Council report “Radiative forcing of climate change: Expanding the concept and addressing uncertainties”.
The paper also further broadens the suite of climate forcings that are involved in earth system heat changes (i.e. global warming) beyond the contribution of the radiative forcing of carbon dioxide. This suite of climate forcings, as applicable to global warming, has been discussed previously on the Climate Science weblog (e.g. see).
When this climate forcing is considered along with the newly recognized warm temperature bias in the nighttime and high latitude winter minimum temperatures (see), the attribution of the reported increase in surface air temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere high latitude winters to the radiative forcing of carbon dioxide is reduced even further.
