New research shows link between cleaner air and rise in temperature
Detective novels, film thrillers and legendary art works have drawn heavily on London’s famous fog for centuries – the colour is so distinctive it has even become a shade of paint. But new research has shown that there has been a 50% decline in pea-soupers and the like across Europe over the last 30 years.
Scientists who led the study into visibility levels across Europe have said the findings may help explain why the continent’s temperature has risen so dramatically over the last few decades. Since the 1970s, European temperatures have risen by around half-a-degree Celsius per decade – faster than the global mean change.
The phenomenon of increased visibility and warmer temperatures has been coined ‘global brightening’ and is being put down to the clean air legislation which has become commonplace across Europe since the 1950s. A reduction in tiny aerosol particles in the atmosphere over the last 30 years has allowed more of the sun’s heat to reach the Earth’s surface.
The advent of clean air legislation in the UK came as a knee-jerk reaction to the Great Smog of 1952, which befell London in December and caused thousands of premature deaths through respiratory infections. Much of the smog was caused by the burning of coal.
The UK’s first Clean Air Act, which came into effect in 1956, aimed to control domestic sources of smoke pollution by introducing smokeless zones in the city.
Don’t get your bikini out just yet though – scientists say that due to the dramatic cleaning of the air over the past 30 years, it’s unlikely that we’ll see such improvements in the future.
IMAGE by Flickr user
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Originally posted 2009-01-20 18:38:00. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
