Sources Of Asian Haze

摘要

Carbonaceous aerosols-that is, the carbon-containing aerosol fraction, such as soot-can affect both climate and human health, especially in regions where the atmosphere contains high levels of such particles. Yet, knowledge of the sources of the aerosols is limited. On page 495 of this issue, Gustafsson et al.use radiocarbon (~(14)C) analysis as an atmospheric tracer to quantify biomass and fossil-fuel contributions to the atmospheric "brown clouds" over South Asia, a persistent and large-scale pollution layer of haze. The results resolve a discrepancy between measurements of other atmospheric tracers and calculations of emission-based inventories for carbonaceous aerosols.