Russian scientists have discovered that volcanic particles can
help cool the Earth, a leading environmental scientist said
yesterday.
The world's temperature can drop 0.5 to 1 C a year if 1 million
tons of volcanic particles are sprinkled across the globe from 10
to 14 km in the sky, said Yuri Israel, deputy head of the UN
Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which won this
year's Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice-president Al Gore.
"Our experiments have shown it's effective, and actually it's
more effective than some methods stipulated in the Kyoto Protocol
to mitigate global warming," Israel said during a Moscow-Beijing
video-conference on climate change. The conference was part of an
exchange program between Russia and China.
The floating particles will not stay in the sky forever. They
will fall to earth in two to three years, said Israel, who is also
Russian Academy of Science's chief climatologist.
The volcanic particles are "not harmful" in that their impact on
the environment is only a fraction of industrial discharges.
A Russian scientist discovered the volcanic particles'
resistance against solar radiation as early as 1974 when he noticed
that the ground temperature around a volcano dropped remarkably
after an eruption, Israel said. After a recent volcanic eruption in
the Philippines, Russian scientists noticed the global temperature
temporarily dropped 0.3 to 0.5 C.
Chinese Academy of Sciences' senior climatologist Huang Yao said
the Russians' volcanic finding is "interesting and correct in
principle".
"I also noticed the temporary drop in global temperature after
the Philippines volcano eruption. So I think the new method may
play an important role in research to fight on climate change."
But Huang said the possible impact of the volcanic particles on
the environment and people's health is not known. "I look forward
to seeing the data (of the Russian scientists)."
(China Daily December 18, 2007)
