Limiting Other Climatic Pollutants, in Addition to CO2, Provides Earth a Fighting Chance

A new analysis found that reducing carbon dioxide emissions alone will not be enough to avert catastrophic global warming.

However, if we concurrently reduced emissions of methane and other commonly underestimated climate pollutants, we may cut global warming in half by 2050 and give the Earth a fighting chance.

Other climate pollutants must be reduced

(Photo : SIMON MAINA/AFP via Getty Images)

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of May 23, is the first to compare the effects of reducing emissions of a wide variety of climatic pollutants by focusing just on carbon dioxide until 2050.

Decarbonization is critical to fulfilling our long-term climate objectives, but it is insufficient, according to research co-author and Duke University Nicholas Distinguished Professor of Earth Science Drew Shindell.

To halt warming in the short term and lessen suffering from more severe heatwaves, droughts, superstorms, and wildfires, we must cut short-lived climate pollutants this decade.

According to the new research, relying almost entirely on reducing carbon dioxide emissions, as most countries presently do, is no longer enough to keep global temperatures from rising by 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.

Such an increase would significantly raise the danger of tipping points with irreversible consequences.

The study indicated that reducing carbon emissions alone may not be enough to keep temperatures from increasing by 2°C.

"Our research demonstrates that climatic pollutants including methane, nitrous oxide, black carbon soot, low-level ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons contributed almost as much to climate change as longer-lived CO2," Shindell said, as per ScienceDaily.

"Because most of them are only present for a short period in the atmosphere, reducing them will decrease warming quicker than any other mitigation method."

It would also assist us in avoiding the short-term temperature rise "backlash" that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has warned may occur if we only reduced fossil fuel emissions.

According to recent IPCC reports, decarbonizing the energy system and shifting to clean energy alone could cause the temperature to increase for a while since, in addition to CO2, greenhouse gases emissions contain sulfate aerosols, which function to cool the climate for a very short time, ranging from days to weeks, before dissipating.

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Methane

Methane is created naturally by the anaerobic bacterial breakdown of vegetative materials in water (where it is sometimes called marsh gas or swamp gas).

Wetlands are the primary natural producer of this kind of methane.

Termites (through digestive processes), volcanoes, vents on the ocean floor, and methane hydrate deposits found along continental edges and beneath Antarctic ice and Arctic permafrost are also major natural sources of methane.

Methane is also a major component of natural gas, which includes between 50% and 90% methane (depending on the source) and occurs as a component of firedamp (flammable gas) along coal seams.

Methane is a significant source of hydrogen as well as several organic compounds.

At high temperatures, methane combines with steam to produce carbon monoxide and hydrogen, the latter of which is utilized in the production of ammonia for fertilizers and explosives.

Methanol, chloroform, carbon tetrachloride, and nitromethane are all useful compounds generated from methane.

Incomplete methane combustion produces carbon black, which is commonly utilized as a reinforcing ingredient in rubber used in automotive tires.

Methane that is created and released into the atmosphere is absorbed by methane sinks, such as soil and the tropospheric methane oxidation process (the lowest atmospheric region).

The majority of the methane released spontaneously is compensated by absorption into natural sinks.

Anthropogenic methane production, on the other hand, can cause methane concentrations to rise faster than sinks can absorb it.

Methane concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere have grown by 6.8 to 10 parts per billion (ppb) every year since 2007.

By 2020, atmospheric methane levels had risen to 1873.5 ppb, more than two to three times higher than preindustrial values of 600-700 ppb.

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