Efforts in east Asia to tackle air pollution might have led to a further acceleration in global warming, a study has found.
China, the largest economy in the area, has significantly cut air pollution over the past decade, with harmful smog reducing by 41% between 2013 and 2022. It achieved this primarily through placing limits on coal plants as well as implementing desulphurisation technologies.
But while the burning of fossil fuels increases the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, the sulphate aerosols emitted have a cooling effect by shading Earth’s surface from sunlight.
Researchers at CICERO Centre for International Climate Research have found that air pollution therefore inadvertently held in check some greenhouse gas-driven warming.
According to a 2021 study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, aerosols cooled the global surface by 0.4°C. But this did not take into account the fact that since the early 2010s, China, then a major polluter, has implemented strict...