So in a nutshell, coal burning has created a new synthetic black mineral impacting global warming and fish in ways we don’t even know yet? The highest to the lowest points?
Yes, and the part that keeps me up at night is that every thermal absorption measurement of glacier black carbon included these hidden nanomaterials — and the technique can’t tell them apart from soot.
We don’t yet know how much of the attributed planetary warming belongs to them. What we do know is that they’re photocatalytically active in ways black carbon isn’t, they’re toxic to biological systems through mechanisms we don’t yet understand, and they’re accumulating in environments we depend on.
The correlation between Magnéli phases and the high-absorption melt layers in the Peru stratigraphy is hard to ignore. And the Cordillera Blanca is the fastest melting alpine ice on the planet.
Fantastic essay, thank you.
So in a nutshell, coal burning has created a new synthetic black mineral impacting global warming and fish in ways we don’t even know yet? The highest to the lowest points?
Yes, and the part that keeps me up at night is that every thermal absorption measurement of glacier black carbon included these hidden nanomaterials — and the technique can’t tell them apart from soot.
We don’t yet know how much of the attributed planetary warming belongs to them. What we do know is that they’re photocatalytically active in ways black carbon isn’t, they’re toxic to biological systems through mechanisms we don’t yet understand, and they’re accumulating in environments we depend on.
The correlation between Magnéli phases and the high-absorption melt layers in the Peru stratigraphy is hard to ignore. And the Cordillera Blanca is the fastest melting alpine ice on the planet.