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Soot From European Industrial Age Melted Alps Glaciers, Prematurely Stopped ‘Little Ice Age’

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Sun, 2013-09-08 19:26 — Maeryn Obley

ibtimes.com - September 3rd, 2013 - Zoe Mintz

Soot from the mid-1800s may be to blame for the retreat of mountain glaciers in the European Alps.

According to a new study published in the Journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, soot, or black carbon, produced during the period of rapid industrialization caused the abrupt retreat of mountain glaciers after the long cold spell known as the Little Ice Age.

"Before now, most scientists have believed the end of the Little Ice Age in the 1800s was due to a natural climatic shift, distinct and well before emissions of carbon dioxide reached levels that could start to influence climate and glaciers in the 20th century,” lead author Thomas Painter, a snow and ice scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a statement.

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Sun, 2013-09-08 20:29 — Kathy Gilbeaux

      

Soot deposits from glaciers on the Monte Rosa massif in the Swiss–Italian Alps have revealed why glaciers began to retreat in the mid-nineteenth century.  imagebroker/Alamy

pnas.org - September 3, 2013

End of the Little Ice Age in the Alps forced by industrial black carbon

Abstract

Glaciers in the European Alps began to retreat abruptly from their mid-19th century maximum, marking what appeared to be the end of the Little Ice Age. Alpine temperature and precipitation records suggest that glaciers should instead have continued to grow until circa 1910. Radiative forcing by increasing deposition of industrial black carbon to snow may represent the driver of the abrupt glacier retreats in the Alps that began in the mid-19th century. Ice cores indicate that black carbon concentrations increased abruptly in the mid-19th century and largely continued to increase into the 20th century, consistent with known increases in black carbon emissions from the industrialization of Western Europe. Inferred annual surface radiative forcings increased stepwise to 13–17 W⋅m−2 between 1850 and 1880, and to 9–22 W⋅m−2 in the early 1900s, with snowmelt season (April/May/June) forcings reaching greater than 35 W⋅m−2 by the early 1900s. These snowmelt season radiative forcings would have resulted in additional annual snow melting of as much as 0.9 m water equivalent across the melt season. Simulations of glacier mass balances with radiative forcing-equivalent changes in atmospheric temperatures result in conservative estimates of accumulating negative mass balances of magnitude −15 m water equivalent by 1900 and −30 m water equivalent by 1930, magnitudes and timing consistent with the observed retreat. These results suggest a possible physical explanation for the abrupt retreat of glaciers in the Alps in the mid-19th century that is consistent with existing temperature and precipitation records and reconstructions.

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/28/1302570110

End of the Little Ice Age in the Alps forced by industrial black carbon (9 page .PDF file - Full text plus supporting information)
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2013/08/28/1302570110.full.pdf+html?with-ds=yes

Also see - How soot killed the Little Ice Age
http://www.nature.com/news/how-soot-killed-the-little-ice-age-1.13650

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