Global efforts to mitigate climate change are beginning to take aim at a once-obscure pollutant called “black carbon” in a shift that may bring policies to cool the planet to families preparing meals at home and farmers readying plots of land for planting.
Research shows that black carbon is also heavily impacting the glaciers of the Himalayas, another region of global significance. The “third pole” or “Asian water tower” feeds some of the world’s biggest rivers, including the Ganges, Yangtze and Yellow River, which together supply drinking water and crop-irrigation for some 1.5 billion people across 10 countries. According to estimates published last year in the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, black-carbon emissions have caused nearly 10% of the ice-cover loss in the Himalayas from 1990 to 2000, of which about 36% is attributed to Indian coal and biofuel burning.
Read the full article @ China Dialogue, January 19th, 2011 - Soot Strategies.
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