Journal
NATURE GEOSCIENCE
Volume 2, Issue 5, Pages 333-336Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/NGEO499
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Funding
- High Altitude Research Foundation Gomergrat
- Atmospheric Composition Change the European Network for Excellence
- German Research Foundation
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Aerosol particles can interact with water vapour in the atmosphere, facilitating the condensation of water and the formation of clouds. At temperatures below 273 K, a fraction of atmospheric particles act as sites for ice-crystal formation. Atmospheric ice crystals-which are incorporated into clouds that cover more than a third of the globe(1)-are thought to initiate most of the terrestrial precipitation(2). Before the switch to unleaded fuel last century, the atmosphere contained substantial quantities of particulate lead; whether this influenced ice-crystal formation is not clear. Here, we combine field observations of ice-crystal residues with laboratory measurements of artificial clouds, to show that anthropogenic lead-containing particles are among the most efficient ice-forming substances commonly found in the atmosphere(3). Using a global climate model, we estimate that up to 0.8 Wm(-2) more long-wave radiation is emitted when 100% of ice-forming particles contain lead, compared with when no particles contain lead. We suggest that post-industrial emissions of particulate lead may have offset a proportion of the warming attributed to greenhouse gases.
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