Air quality—climate forcing double whammy from domestic firelighters
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A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
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Date
2023-07-25
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en
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8
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npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, Volume 6, issue 1
Abstract
Renewable biomass plays a crucial role in transitioning toward climate-friendly heating sources; however, not without its collateral damage in terms of the disproportionately high effects on local air quality. The associated proliferation of residential heating appliances around the world, including developed regions like Europe, where an estimated 70 million are housed, does not appear to be abating. Here, we identify super self-concentrating ambient pollution events whereby solid-fuel residential heating haze is infused with a hitherto unaccounted for firelighter smoke that contributes additional adsorbing black carbon. This black carbon-organic aerosol combination results in a strong positive radiative forcing (up to 149 W m−2) and alters the boundary layer thermodynamics sufficiently so as to further suppress pollutant dilution and dispersion leading to extraordinary high submicron particulate matter (PM1: 166 µg m−3). Unfortunately, there is no silver lining in this cloud until the promotion of solid biomass fires with firelighters for ignition is replaced by a co-benefit policy.Description
Funding Information: C.L. acknowledges the support by the International Partnership Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant no. 175GJHZ2022039FN), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) under Grant no. 42277092 and 42107126, and the support from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU) Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme (Grant no. P0039190). This work was supported by EPA-Ireland (AEROSOURCE, 2016-CCRP-MS-31), Department of Environment, Climate and Communications. The authors would also like to acknowledge the contribution of the COST Action CA16109 (COLOSSAL) and MaREI, the SFI Research Centre for Energy, Climate, and Marine. Publisher Copyright: © 2023, The Author(s).
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Lin, C, Ceburnis, D, Vaishya, A, Trubetskaya, A, Tan, Y, Wang, T, Smith, W, Johnson, R, Xu, W, Monaghan, R F D, O’Dowd, C & Ovadnevaite, J 2023, ' Air quality—climate forcing double whammy from domestic firelighters ', npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, vol. 6, no. 1, 101 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41612-023-00427-x