The Planetary Boundaries model looks at: climate change; stratospheric ozone; land use change; fresh water use; biological diversity; ocean acidification; nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to the biosphere and oceans; aerosol loading; and chemical pollution.
On a global basis, as much as 35 percent of the sodium, 55 percent of the chlorine, 15 percent of the potassium, and 37 percent of the sulfate in river water may be derived from the oceans through sea aerosol generation.
The papers in the special issue report some of these exercises (for ocean colour, aerosol, ozone, greenhouse gases, clouds, soil moisture, sea surface temperature and glaciers).
This paper summarizes the scientific expectations and the first results obtained by the POLDER instrument in various fields, clouds, radiative budget, water vapor, ocean color, aerosols over land and over the ocean, ocean color, and land surfaces.
The issue of ocean-generated aerosols — solid or liquid particles suspended in the atmosphere that can have an impact through cloud formation, reflection of sunlight and other processes — is a relatively new one in climate science, Dr. Beniston said.
From the abstract: A detailed reanalysis is presented of a 'Bayesian' climate parameter study (Forest et al., 2006) that estimates climate sensitivity (ECS) jointly with effective ocean diffusivity and aerosol forcing, using optimal fingerprints to compare multi-decadal observations with simulations by the MIT 2D climate model at varying settings of the three climate parameters.
The results demonstrate the skill of the algorithm in various regions of the ocean where absorbing aerosols are present, and for two different sensors.
Those heavy particles dropped out of the clouds before they crossed the ocean, but finer aerosols, including mercury from space heaters and arsenic from smelters, traveled in the clouds for more than a week.
That was because the main sensor on that spacecraft, VIIRS, was providing good data on factors such as clouds, weather, and sea temperatures but lacked the capability to measure ocean color and aerosols, data used widely by marine biologists, oceanographers, and climate scientists.
The other six -- ocean acidification, stratospheric ozone, aerosol loadings, freshwater use, land use changes, and chemical pollution -- are, to varying degrees, approaching a scale "where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded".
