Pollution from India, China reaches stratosphere, speeds up global warming

Rising warm air, in turn, sucks in cooler air from Indian Ocean, causing an earlier onset of monsoon

Pollutants from China and India, are not only increasing in quantity but are also being pumped to greater heights in the atmosphere, thanks to the South Asian summer monsoon system, scientists have discovered.

In turn, this pollution is affecting the very pattern of the South Asian monsoon. The polluting aerosols, from the burning of fossil fuels and, to a lesser extent, biomass, also absorb heat from the sun’s radiation, further increasing global warming.

A new paper published in the journal Climate Dynamics in November concludes that aerosols have strong impacts on regional monsoon rainfall and circulation. The scientists found that