The Emergence of Black Carbon into the Climate Policy Arena

Until a few years ago, aerosols such as black carbon were solely in the domain of atmospheric research. We did not fully understand their roles in atmospheric chemistry or absorption of radiation. The only policy relevance concerned fine particles in general, and the regulation of inhalable particulate matter in the developed world signaled that high local concentrations in cities were a public health issue. But gradually the importance of aerosols spread to regional scale. We learned that aerosols play important roles in regional air quality concerns such as regional haze, visibility impairment, and reduced insolation. Finally, the importance of aerosols reached global scale, as it was realized that their role in climate modification is significant. Within the last year, the importance of black carbon has come to the forefront. Work by Hansen, Jacobson and others has elevated the contribution of black carbon to perhaps the second most important global warming species after carbon dioxide. This is beginning to have profound repercussions in the policy arena and in the world of research planning. In his speech of June 11, 2001, President Bush specifically mentioned black soot as an important pollutant not addressed by the Kyoto Protocol. Then, on February 14, 2002, he unveiled a new U.S. Climate Change Strategy that called for a National Aerosol-Climate Interactions Program (NACIP) to define and evaluate the role of aerosols that absorb solar radiation, such as black carbon and mineral dust. The result has been the formulation of a much more policy-focused agenda to supersede the more academic aerosol research programs of previous years. But black carbon poses an array of problems not previously faced in air pollution control regimes: it is exceedingly difficult to measure accurately, a large portion of the global budget arises from biomass burning, the fuel-derived sources are largely domestic stoves used for cooking and heating, and the primary emitting countries are China and India. This paper discusses the emerging importance of black carbon, its sources, and the mitigation challenges it presents.