Home Fires in India Contribute to Melting Arctic Half a World Away
27.05.2005 - Other
Poor women cooking family meals in India are helping to melt snow and ice in the Arctic, startling new studies show. Soot from their fires gets wafted into the atmosphere to fall out on the ice thousands of miles away, hastening its disappearance.
Scientists have found that one-third of the soot affecting the Arctic comes from South Asia. And Indian studies show that nearly half of the soot emitted in the region comes from cooking fires. Last November a major scientific study found that the sea ice had thinned by nearly half over the past 30 years. It is expected to disappear altogether during the summer by 2070, leaving open water all the way to the North Pole.
The scientists also concluded that the Arctic is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the globe. This is mostly due to worldwide pollution by carbon dioxide and the other greenhouses gases, which cause global warming. However now soot may also be looked at carefully in relation to having a significant warming impact on the Arctic".
