Aerosols and Pollution

Reported November 2006

GREENBELT, Md. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- While riding his bike Yoram Kaufman was struck and killed by an SUV. He was a prominent, atmospheric scientist.

"People asked him what he did. "I work at NASA." That's it," say Jean Kaufman, Yoram's wife. "He never bragged about his work and about his accomplishments."

But, Yoram's work was something to brag about. For the first time, he and colleagues at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center found aerosols, or tiny light or dark particles within pollution, can start and stop clouds from forming.

"We knew aerosols were light and dark," Lorraine Remer, Ph.D., a physical scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, tells Ivanhoe. "We did not know they had any effect on the cloud cover."

Aerosols from dust are lighter in color. Darker aerosols come from factories and cars. And it's the color of aerosols that's key to cloud development.

"The light ones will increase clouds," Dr. Remer says, "The dark ones will decrease clouds."

Light-colored aerosols reflect light back to space, keeping cloud temperatures consistent to help form new clouds. Dark aerosols absorb more sunlight, warming up clouds and evaporating water inside the cloud, causing the cloud to disappear.

Understanding changing surface temperatures helps predict how much the planet's climate will change in the future -- a subject Yoram was passionate about.

"In addition to being such a brilliant and extremely creative scientist, he probably is the smartest man I've ever met," Jean says. A brilliant mind may be gone, but his work leaves a lasting impact.

The new data also helps scientists understand how pollution can disrupt rainfall when it increases and decreases cloud cover.

The American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Lorraine Remer
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, MD
(301) 614-6194
remer@climate.gsfc.nasa.gov

American Geophysical Union
Washington, DC 20009-1277
(800) 966-2481
http://www.agu.org

The American Meteorological Society
Boston, MA 02108-3693
(617) 227-2425
http://www.ametsoc.org

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