Climate Change in the Arctic - The Changing Arctic Environment: The Arctic Messenger - page 288

Arctic Implications of Short-Lived Climate Forcers,
Including Black Carbon
Agents capable of warming the atmosphere can be divided into two categories: those that
remain in the atmosphere for hundreds or thousands of years, such as carbon dioxide (CO 2 ),
and those with a much shorter half-life (days to a few years), known as short-lived cli-
mate forcers (SLCFs). Just before I retired in 2004, I went to a CLRTAP meeting in Berlin,
where I picked up a paper then just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences of the United States of America . It examined soot as a climate-forcing agent via
its impact on snow and ice albedo. It was followed by another paper by the same authors the
following year. The potential significance for the Arctic was clear, but I gave it little atten-
tion until three years later, when Lars-Otto Reiersen told me about a small assessment that
was being carried out as an initiative of AMAP to scope out the possible adaptation and mit-
igation opportunities relating to SLCFs and the Arctic climate.
The results were published by AMAP in 2008 as two small reports. For their size, they
must be two of the most effective of AMAP's products. Another more comprehensive as-
sessmentinitiativeofthesecretariatdealingexclusivelywithblackcarbon(BC)impactswas
published in 2011 and was complemented at the same time by an Arctic Council report on
BC emissions and mitigation options.
There is no dispute that the growing concentration stockpile of CO 2 will stay in the
atmosphere and oceans for at least hundreds of years. Therefore, we cannot hope for a long-
term solution without real and meaningful reductions in total CO 2 emissions that are expli-
citly designed to reduce atmospheric levels by an identified date. Simply reducing, for ex-
ample, the emissions for a given distance travelled by a motor vehicle will not reduce CO 2
levels in the atmosphere if we simultaneously build more cars. Sadly, building and selling
more “things” that require energy seems to be implicit in that holy political imperative of
maintaining a growing economy. But while we wait for our global leaders to muster enough
courage to act on CO 2 , should we also expect them to act on SLCFs?