Particles climate change

Atmospheric chemists and other scientists who have focused on pollution and global climate change have much to contribute to national security and homeland defense. These scientists have developed computational methods to accurately model and in many cases predict the transport of pollutants and particles in air or water. These same tools can be used to predict the effect of release of a chemical agent in an urban area so that appropriate emergency response plans can be developed. 

C. AEROSOL PARTICLES, ATMOSPHERIC RADIATION, AND CLIMATE CHANGE... 

As discussed in Section C.la, sea salt particles in the marine boundary layer have been shown to likely play a major role in backscattering of solar radiation (Murphy et al., 1998), i.e., to the direct effect of aerosol particles. However, they also contribute to the indirect effect involving cloud formation, since they can also act as CCN. Since such particles are a natural component of the marine atmosphere, their contribution will not play a role in climate change, unless their concentration were somehow to be changed by anthropogenic activities, e.g., through changes in wind speed over the... 

A controversy with possibly far-reaching consequences concerns the impact of atmospheric particles on the earth s climate. Temperature is one of the most easily monitored indicators of climatic change. Among the many discussions of the effects of aerosols on the global mean temperature, we direct the reader to the monograph by Twomey (1977) and the paper by Toon and Pollack (1980), from which some of the following is taken. 

It seems that we have cast atmospheric particles most often in the role of villains they may cause cataclysmic climatic changes they reduce visibility they may aid in the formation of photochemical smog and acid rain. But there is a scheme afoot to make them do some useful work by acting as ubiquitous retro-reflectors for laser beams. 

Varve or rhythmites chronology is another approach based on the examination of geological materials. In this model, the distribution of the laminated sediments formed in the bottom of the beds of dried-out lakes (as a consequence of the seasonal melting of glaciers and the subsequent deposition of coarse particles supplied by streams, followed by finer materials such as sand, silt, and clay) is analyzed and correlated with climate changes [64],... 

Water balance models have frequently been used to examine the surface runoff from watersheds. Some of these models, focused more on climate change, are called Soil-Vegetation-Atmosphere Transfer Schemes (SVATs) (Vordsmarty and Peterson, 2000). These model simulations use different parameters such as vegetation cover, soil texture (different sizes of mineral particles), water-holding capacity of soils, surface roughness, and albedo (the fraction of light reflected by a body or surface), to make predictions on... 

Catalysts which have the capacity to adsorb water or carbon dioxide from the air may exhibit weight instability due to climatic changes. Time and variation of temperature or pressure may, in principle, give rise to losses or gains in weight due to changes in water content. Metal particles are susceptible to sintering with a concomitant loss of dispersion. 

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