Geophys. Res. Lett. 39, L11703 (2012)

Black-carbon aerosols in the atmosphere can absorb sunlight and cause local surface dimming. Asian carbon aerosol emissions may continue to grow in the coming years, and have been shown to have an impact not only on a regional scale but also on global circulation and climate.

Haiyan Teng and co-workers, from the National Center for Atmospheric Research, USA, used a fully coupled global climate model to investigate the effect of increases in Asian carbon aerosol emissions on US temperatures, over the period 2005–2024. They simulate three scenarios with increases in Asian carbon aerosols of two, six and ten times the control.

The two higher scenarios produce an average warming of ∼0.4 °C for the US East Coast during winter, and over the entire United States in the summer. Such warming is caused by general circulation change, resulting from the increased Asian black-carbon aerosols. This study reports warming in addition to that already expected from anthropogenic emissions.