Coronovirus effect on global warming

[colin]

Climate scientists have for a long time included the cooling effect of industrial pollutants in their predictive models, but that effect may have been underestimated, masking the true scale of global warming which has been occuring . We may be in for a very hot summer given the collapse in cooling pollutants in the atmosphere due to world wide lockdowns. It will be interesting to see what happens climate wise this year.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 104611.htm

[UncleEbenezer]

Interesting hypothesis, and a contrast to the headlines about demand for oil. Those pollutants will be an effect somewhat akin to what we see with a really big volcanic eruption, affecting global weather for months or even a couple of years. Or indeed what was once (probably exaggeratedly) called nuclear winter.

But surely we cannot yet know all of what's changing. At least some shutdowns have been short-term (I've seen quite a few reports of once-disrupted supply chains from China already being already restored), and there must be big unknowns from other effects, such as India's shutdown sending migrant workers back to their villages (surely a fine way to turbocharge spread of an infectious virus) and what may happen to the land as they seek to survive on it.

And of course there's the biggest atmospheric effect over short timescales: water vapour, aka the ever-varied weather.

[colin]

Interesting hypothesis, and a contrast to the headlines about demand for oil. Those pollutants will be an effect somewhat akin to what we see with a really big volcanic eruption, affecting global weather for months or even a couple of years. Or indeed what was once (probably exaggeratedly) called nuclear winter.

But surely we cannot yet know all of what's changing. At least some shutdowns have been short-term (I've seen quite a few reports of once-disrupted supply chains from China already being already restored), and there must be big unknowns from other effects, such as India's shutdown sending migrant workers back to their villages (surely a fine way to turbocharge spread of an infectious virus) and what may happen to the land as they seek to survive on it.

And of course there's the biggest atmospheric effect over short timescales: water vapour, aka the ever-varied weather.

I heard a climate scientist discussing this cooling effect some years ago and he/ she said that most of the pollutants concerned had a short life in the atmosphere as they quickly fall to earth so for the cooling effect to operate the pollution must be continuosly produced. I read a book by James Lovelock on global warming some years ago, he sumarised the predictions of climate science at that time which did turn out to be quite alarmist , he too predicted that warming would accelarate during an economic recession but I did not notice that 2008-9 was a particularly warm year but industrial activity now has collapsed so we should see some effect if the models are acurate.