UC Riverside
Black carbon and tropospheric ozone, two pollutants typically associated with urban smog, may be key drivers in the advance of the northern tropics.
The northern tropics are on a march toward the pole. Over the last thirty years, the warm, moist belt around the equator has expanded by between 2-and-8 degrees northward.
When the phenomenon was first described five years ago, it was thought to be fueled primarily by carbon dioxide emissions. But a report, published recently by University of California at Riverside researchers in the journal Nature, has proposed a new driver of the expanding tropics: soot and ozone pollution generated largely by wood burning and diesel combustion in the rapidly developing nations of Southeast Asia. Continue reading
