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| Titel |
Environmental Effects of Black Carbon on the Tibetan Plateau: View from the Observations |
| VerfasserIn |
J. Ming, Z. Du, S. Zhao |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2012
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 14 (2012) |
| Datensatznummer |
250058453
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Black carbon (BC) is now well known by scientific societies for its complex environmental
and climatic effects. The Tibetan Plateau (TP), an absolute highland on Earth, is usually
encompassed by heavy pollutant emissions, such as black carbon, organic carbon, and other
industry-related species. And South and East Asia are two strongly emitting regions
neighboring the TP. Seasonal alternations of westerly and monsoon make the TP be a
depositing receptor of BC aerosols. From the view of satellite monitoring, the TP
is like a virginal island for the pollutants within the grey smog ocean, especially
during winters. The TP is a primary distributing area of the mountain glaciers in the
North Hemisphere. High elevated terrain (e.g., the Himalayas) cannot exclude the
pollutants outside completely, but restrain them in some way. Two carbon-aerosol
monitoring sites (Qilian in the northeast margin of the TP and Nam Co in the south
hinterland) measured atmospheric BC during the past several years. The results at
the Qilian station showed the average BC concentration was 45 ng m-3 during
2009-2011, and that at the Nam Co station was 80 ng m-3 during 2006-2009. The
atmospheric BC levels at these two sites are significantly lower than that observed by the
NCP-O GAW station on the south slope of Mt Everest. BC is believed to have the
capacity to enhance snow-ice surface solar absorption and to accelerate melting.
Measurements from snow and ice sampling in the TP glacial areas showed average
BC concentration of snow and ice in the investigated glaciers of TP was about 40
ppbw, yielding a mean forcing of 5 W m-2. The lowest BC concentration was
deposited in the Himalayan glaciers due to highest elevation, while the highest
concentration was in the central TP glaciers likely due to strong surface ablation.
The present radiation observations on the TP glaciers show the ratio of BC forcing
accounting for the total surface radiative absorption is about 5% in the glaciers of
the TP, which does not contribute significantly to the melting of the High Asia
glaciers.
Acknowledgement
This work is supported by the Global Change Research Program of China
(2010CB951401&2007CB411503), National Natural Science Fundation of China (No.
40901046), SKLCS (No. SKLCS-ZZ-2008-01), CMA (No. GYHY201106023), and Youth
Fund of CNCC (2011-2012). |
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