{"id":10961,"date":"2025-03-27T13:18:13","date_gmt":"2025-03-27T10:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/?p=10961"},"modified":"2025-03-31T13:18:29","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T10:18:29","slug":"reducing-emissions-of-super-pollutants-would-slam-emergency-brake-on-global-warming","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cfwt.sua.ac.tz\/ecosystems\/news\/reducing-emissions-of-super-pollutants-would-slam-emergency-brake-on-global-warming","title":{"rendered":"Reducing Emissions of \u2018Super Pollutants\u2019 Would Slam Emergency Brake on Global Warming"},"content":{"rendered":"

A small group of climate pollutants\u2013 including the air pollutants black carbon, methane, and ozone \u2013 are responsible for nearly\u00a0half\u00a0<\/a>of global temperature increases to date.<\/p>\n

Reducing these emissions, which only remain in the atmosphere for a few weeks to decades, could serve as the \u201cemergency brake\u201d critical to halting runaway climate change, said experts Monday on the eve of the second WHO Air Pollution and Health\u00a0Conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Although these pollutants exert enormous 20-year climate-warming potential that is 80 to 2,000 times greater than carbon dioxide (CO2) per ton of emissions, their lifespan is far shorter than CO2, which remains in the atmosphere for a century or more.<\/p>\n

These pollutants are also projected to continue warming the climate with greater potency than CO2 over the next century.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you reduce them today, we\u2019ll see impacts in our lifetimes,\u201d said Claire Henly, executive director of the Super Pollutant Field Catalyst, a US start-up NGO, at a media briefing ahead of the\u00a0conference.<\/p>\n

While CO2 has received the overwhelming amount of climate mitigation attention, Henly and others argued that addressing a class of \u201csuper pollutant\u201d greenhouse gases and particles, also known as \u201cshort-lived climate pollutants,\u201d offers<\/a> the greatest opportunity to have a rapid, and meaningful impact on both health and climate.<\/p>\n

Henly and others identified ozone, black carbon, and methane as super pollutants because of their wide-ranging impacts on food security, health, and climate change<\/a>. Slowing the rate of climate change<\/a> would make it easier for the \u201cworld to adapt to climate change,\u201d said Henly.<\/p>\n

Nexus of climate change, air pollution and health<\/span><\/h3>

Contents<\/p>