Regional impacts of short-lived climate pollutants

Regional impacts of short-lived climate pollutants
Many regions of the world suffer from accelerated climate change. These include the
Arctic region, South Asia, parts of Africa and various mountainous or densely populated
areas of the world. In South Asia, for example, short-lived climate pollutants are causing
threats to regional climatic systems, such as monsoons, and hydrological balances, with
implications for food security as well as for water supply. In the Arctic, emissions of SLCPs
– primarily black carbons – transported through the atmosphere at high latitudes are
deposited on snow and ice, where they have a deleterious effect on the surface albedo in the
form of heating and increased melting. Emissions of black carbon in the Arctic region are
expected to increase as the northeast and northwest passages are more frequently opened
to shipping; this, in turn, will further accelerate the heating and melting phenomena.