No, European heatwaves are not CAUSED by a fall in air pollution. The word CAUSED is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting here! Let's look at what the study being 'reported' on was actually researching and what it found🤓 1/22 🧵
This was the paper being covered. They wanted to understand why temperatures in Europe are currently 2.3°C warmer than they were in the pre-industrial era, while the global average is currently "only" 1.3°C warmer. And why earlier climate models UNDERestimated European temps. 2/
The Earth’s climate is warming due to man-made climate change. We also know that a lot of individual factors can feed into the rate of warming globally and locally One of the many factors impacting temperatures on the Earth’s surface is particles in the atmosphere 3/ I covered this topic last year when looking at the claims that the government was "dimming the sun"👇 open.substack.com 4/
Basically, some particles caused by burning fossil fuels, such as Sulphur dioxide, can go up into the atmosphere, where they reflect sunlight back away from the Earth’s surface, cooling the Earth below. (Other types of particle can have the opposite effect - more on that in a bit!) 5/ So the paper in question looked at the impact of reducing air pollution in Europe from the 1980s onwards on European temperature rises. They found, like in the shipping lanes example, aerosols such as Sulphates had been acting like a sun shade... 6/ And removing those aerosols from the atmosphere with air pollution legislation had removed that sun shade. We are now experiencing a fuller impact of global temperature increases, which other, more polluted areas are not yet experiencing. 7/ Europe has obviously heated up more as a direct result of removing the shading aerosols. But this has had a secondary impact as the polar region has heated, meaning a lower temp difference to the tropics, which is messing up the jet streams that affect our weather systems. 8/ The polar jet stream can then form Rossby Waves, which basically get “stuck”, meaning hot weather systems end up staying for prolonged periods, which can lead to these extended heat waves we're now unfortunately getting used to.🥵 9/
The research paper was mainly focused on understanding this phenomenon And recognising that it was the missing piece of the puzzle in why climate scientists failed to predict that European temperatures would rise more rapidly than the rest of the world. 10/ It does not say that reducing pollution causes heatwaves. It says that reducing pollution has decreased the shading element of aerosols, increasing temperatures in the North, which have disrupted the jet streams, leading to hot weather systems getting stuck. 11/ So, yes, the prolonged heatwaves and higher temps compared to the rest of the world are impacted by the reduction in air pollution… But only cos more polluted parts of the world aren’t warming up as fast as Europe, as their pollution levels are currently protecting them from the worst impacts The increase in global temperatures is driven by man-made climate change, not by removing pollutants from the atmosphere. Of course the Telegraph knew all of this, despite the headline, as buried deep in the article they included the following paragraph👇
Of course, some aren't interested in the reality buried deep behind the paywalled Telegraph articles 🙄 No "scientific consensus" has NOT "screwed up" CO2 is still very much responsible for higher temperatures. The only lying and gaslighting is coming from the science deniers like Tice 14/
First up, studies have shown that each year millions of people die as a direct consequence of air pollution. Cleaning up the air is vital to protect our health. 15/
As for aerosol effects on our environment - they can either: ❄️ Cool it, such Volcano or fossil fuel sulphate particles and SO2 or 🔥Warm it, such as soot from burning fossil fuels Cos guess what, this stuff is not as black and white as your social media feed tells you! 16/
Burning fossil fuels produces some particles that cool the climate, while other particles cause it to warm up. But burning fossil fuels ALSO increases greenhouse gas emissions, which have a far greater warming effect on the planet than air pollution has on cooling it. 17/ Aerosol air pollution has made the planet about 0.4°C cooler than it otherwise would be. Greenhouse gas emissions, on the other hand, have made the planet 1.5°C warmer than it would be.
The warming of the planet is not caused by a fall in the air pollutants that humans added to the atmosphere in the first place! It is caused by greenhouse gas emissions Air pollution has simply protected us from the worst impacts of global warming. And paradoxically, had we NOT implemented policies to reduce air pollution, greenhouse emissions would also have been far higher, which would have led to EVEN HIGHER temperatures 20/ A quick word on science literacy. If you are able to grasp that reducing man-made air pollution can impact global climates, then you MUST be able to grasp that man-made greenhouse emissions can do the same. You cannot "trust the science" on one and not the other 21/ More detail and all the links are in this week's Substack👇 open.substack.com It's free 👍🏻 However, paid subscriptions and coffee (or tea in my case!) donations (buymeacoffee.com) really help 😜