I have a broken logic board when it comes to lost cloud cooling from SO2 reduction.

I used to think:
you take SO2 away, and the atmosphere heats up by 0.x degrees, and afterwards, the forcings from GHG pile on that new level of achieved heat. But SO2-reduction from x Mt per year to zero is more like an event, and when zero is reached, it stops adding heat.

Now I think different and I really need help getting my head around it.

A stretch of ocean from now on is exposed to direct🌞and takes up more heat.
Every day its >layers< heat more, ie faster than before. Forever.
To me, it sounds like the recent growth rate must continue. Eg, 2023: +0.01*, 2024: +0.011, 2025: 0.012, 2026: 0.013 forever?

*dunno what the real cloud effect is. +0.01 in 2023 is only a guess for sake of the illustration.

Important with the ocean's exposure to direct sun is that it has layers. Yesterday's additional °C gets mixed down by wind and waves. But it also comes up again and re-interacts with the atmo= warms it today.

How is it with land?
When SO2 stops over hard land surface, lost cooling is a one-off and won't add °C beyond its local potential.
??? No, that can't be right.

( Over land, SO2 reduction also lets forests recover from acid rain – which increases cloud formation around "VOC", or call them tree pheromones. Over land, this new cloud formation mechanism counters the lost clouds from reduced SO2 pollution to some extent. Seen a paper somewhere saying by 40%. )

Now I think, in both environments, lost SO2 cloud-cooling is a gift that keeps on giving MORE. Not a single warming potential, but a forever growing heat addition.

Help?

#climateChange #climatefeedbacks #atmosphere #ocean #cloud #SO2

A new study connects recent regionally confined warming in China 2010ff to their strive for healthy air by scrubbing SO2 from their coal chimneys. *

In other news, India is lambasted by a politician for excluding most of their coal chimneys from SO2 scrubbing regulation. **

And here's a curious side effect of acid rain from SO2:
it reduces CO2 emissions from soil 💡
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0341816221005725 "Acid rain reduces soil CO2 emission and promotes soil organic carbon accumulation in association with decreasing the biomass and biological activity of ecosystems: A meta-analysis" by Ziqiang Liu et al 2022

So when large areas simultaneously get rid of SO2 pollution
, CO2 emissions start to rise noticeably? Europe's SO2 reduction was fastest, USA is her typical laggard, and China began 2010ff and is now already on par with a mid-1990s Europe, much faster than USA.

My musings:
I guess, it means, once the soil removes the acid, CO2 emissions start to rise.
AFAIK, acid removal is no automatism in forest soil but I can imagine, removal from agricultural land happens automatically bit by bit during subsequent harvests? (Yum!)

Germany distributed chalk or something to her forest soils to counter the acidification and to rescue dying forests.

But. Plants and other beings suffer during acidification. And when forests recover they raise their carbon uptake. Crop yields also recover when the soil does, I reckon. (Indeed! see *** and pic 2, and also ****. Now I wonder whether the elsewhere celebrated yield gains are more due to cleaner air than genetical engineering and pesticides!)

Maybe, CO2 emissions from soil are balanced out by increased carbon uptake from healthier beings.
Does the paper say anything about all these musings?

"Overall, the responses of soil GHGs emissions to acid rain vary across different ecosystems, climates, soil types and experimental duration, and thus no consensus has emerged yet" 😁

* "East Asian aerosol cleanup has likely contributed to the recent acceleration in global warming" by Samset et al https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-025-02527-3
A Conversation piece by the authors: https://theconversation.com/cleaner-air-in-east-asia-may-have-driven-recent-acceleration-in-global-warming-our-new-study-indicates-260601

** "‘Faulty premises’: Jairam Ramesh slams govt after it eases SO2 emission norms" https://theprint.in/india/faulty-premises-jairam-ramesh-slams-govt-after-it-eases-so2-emission-norms/2688855/

*** "The negative effects of simulated acid rain on maize physiology, grain quality and yield in a field trial" by Jidong Liao et al, 2025 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1309104224003477

**** "More Power Generation, More Wheat Losses? Evidence from Wheat Productivity in North China" by Fujin Yi et al 2024 .
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-024-00841-6

#SO2 #AcidRain #SoilBiodiversity #soil #carbonUptake #CO2 #greenhousegases #agriculture #forest #cropyield #ClimateChange

SciTech Chronicles. . . . . . . . .Mar 19th, 2025

https://bit.ly/stc031925

#Anchorage #CO2 #SO2 #magma #Nylon-6,6 #fermentation #Electrochemistry #Biorenewable #Bedmap3 #fast-warming #flow #sea-level #aquifers #Seismometers #uplift #subsidence #MTZ #subduction #ringwoodite #wadsleyite

Due to acid rain, countries lowered SO2 emissions from industry and power plants. But SO2 is also a coolant via cloud-seeding aerosols. See Glen Peters' tweet: globally -0.5°C from 2010-2019. A very short lifetime of mere days means, SO2 molecules cool only locally, while methane and CO2 heat all.

SO2 is emitted by burning coal and ship fuel, & in #volcanism.
The other major coolant NOx, also short-lived with regional not global direct forcing, is emitted by burning fossil fuels eg in cars, and lightening storms & biomass burning.
So when our emissions drop, local heating goes up: " #TerminationShock".

When I say "local heating goes up", I should add that via wind and land-atmosphere and ocean-atmosphere interaction, this local heating also has global repercussions. Eg., wind drives the warm-er air parcel across the globe. So a warmer China and Japan who ditched SO2 and NOx, also heat the #Pacific.

Lowering SO2 and NOx while N2O (fertilizer), CH4 and CO2 emissions still rise is rather stupid.
#climate #climateChange #methane #SO2 #NOx #atmosphere #ocean