London, Nov 11 (Inditop.com) The European Space Agency’s GlobAerosol project, drawing on 14 years of satellite imagery, has produced a comprehensive global data bank on aerosols which play a vital role in global climate balance and in regulating climate change.
Satellite data can provide vital information on the global distribution of aerosols, suspended in the air, to help predict the weather and can monitor pollution.
Some aerosols occur naturally, originating from sea-spray, wind-blown dust, volcanic eruptions and biochemical emissions from oceans and forests.
Others are produced through emissions from industrial pollution, fossil-fuel burning, man-made forest fires and agriculture, says a European Space Agency release.
Wind-blown dust are important because they strongly affect the earth’s energy balance in two ways: they scatter and absorb sunlight and infrared emission from the earth’s surface, and act as a source for the formation of cloud droplets.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), these effects tend to cool the planet to almost the same degree as carbon dioxide emissions warm it. These estimates are uncertain, however, so more data are needed.
The GlobAerosol project was carried out by GMV (Spain), the University of Oxford and Rutherford Appleton Lab (UK) and Laboratoire Optique Atmospherique (France).
