Discussion
Which one of the following causes warming of the atmosphere but cooling of the Earth's surface ?
Answer: B
The answer is black carbon aerosols.
Black carbon (soot) absorbs sunlight strongly. The absorbed energy heats the layer of air in which the particles sit, while less sunlight reaches the ground, so the surface is dimmed and cooled. This combination of atmospheric heating and surface cooling is well documented for the South Asian brown cloud.
Ozone and the other greenhouse gases absorb outgoing infrared radiation and warm the surface as well as the lower atmosphere, so they do not cool the surface. Sulphate and nitrate aerosols mainly scatter sunlight back to space; they cool the surface but do not warm the atmosphere, since they absorb very little.
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