Pollution from Asia shaping California storms
Gary Robbins
SignOn San Diego
12/06/2011
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography will present fresh evidence during a science conference in San Francisco Tuesday that pollution from central Asia affects the intensity of winter storms in California's Sierra Nevada, which provides a portion of the water consumed in San Diego County.
The new finding -- which Scripps summarized online -- is largely based on an analysis of two storms that occurred a week apart in the Sierra Nevada in 2009. The second storm produced 1.4 times more precipitation than the first.
"The aerosols contained in the second storm were comprised of iron, titanium and other elements typically sent airborne by dust storms in central Asia. The difference shows the influence that pollutants from the other side of the world can have on local climate."
The summary doesn't specify how much the pollutants contributed to the storms. But Scripps researcher Kim Prather says in the overview, "We went into this looking to understand the impacts of local pollution sources on clouds and precipitation and surprisingly found that long-range transport appeared to be playing an important role."
