Originally published January 25 2005
Diminishing sunlight may mean a higher probability for global warming
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Research indicates that the amount of sun light penetrating the Earth has been steadily declining for the past 50 years. Scientists now have to take into account the cooling effects of diminished sunlight when measuring an increase in temperature due to the greenhouse effect. The new findings show we are at a greater risk for global warming than previously thought. Scientists think global dimming, caused by air pollution, has affected global rain patterns as well.
We are all seeing rather less of the Sun, according to scientists who have been looking at five decades of sunlight measurements.
They have reached the disturbing conclusion that the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface has been gradually falling.
Paradoxically, the decline in sunlight may mean that global warming is a far greater threat to society than previously thought.
The effect was first spotted by Gerry Stanhill, an English scientist working in Israel.
Dr Stanhill called it "global dimming", but his research, published in 2001, met a sceptical response from other scientists.
It was only recently, when his conclusions were confirmed by Australian scientists using a completely different method to estimate solar radiation, that climate scientists at last woke up to the reality of global dimming.
This visible air pollution reflects sunlight back into space, preventing it reaching the surface.
Because the particles seed the formation of water droplets, polluted clouds contain a larger number of droplets than unpolluted clouds.
Scientists are now worried that dimming, by shielding the oceans from the full power of the Sun, may be disrupting the pattern of the world's rainfall.
"My main concern is global dimming is also having a detrimental impact on the Asian monsoon," says Professor Veerhabhadran Ramanathan, professor of climate and atmospheric sciences at the University of California, San Diego.
But perhaps the most alarming aspect of global dimming is that it may have led scientists to underestimate the true power of the greenhouse effect.
They know how much extra energy is being trapped in the Earth's atmosphere by the extra carbon dioxide we have placed there.
This has led many scientists to conclude that the present-day climate is less sensitive to the effects of carbon dioxide than it was, say, during the ice age, when a similar rise in CO2 led to a temperature rise of six degrees Celsius.
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