Deadly Pacific ‘blobs’ tied to emission cuts in China

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By WARREN CORNWALL, Science. 

Excerpt: Starting in late 2013, the first in a handful of record-shattering heat waves struck the north Pacific Ocean near Alaska. Temperatures in these warm “blobs,” which have occurred four times in the past decade, sometimes reach more than 2°C above normal. ...Research has implicated climate change, which can supercharge natural fluctuations in ocean heat. But now, scientists are pointing to another surprising contributor: China’s success in stemming air pollution. A steep decline in aerosols—tiny airborne particles such as sulfates—emitted by Chinese factories and power plants in the 2010s appears to have amplified a string of extreme heat waves on the other side of the Pacific, driving up to 30% of the temperature increase during these heat waves, scientists report today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. ...Aerosols can act like tiny mirrors, reflecting sunlight back into space and reducing the amount that reaches Earth’s surface. Eliminate them and the world warms. Scientists last month reported that cleaner air might be responsible for 40% of the increase in heat driving global warming between 2001 and 2019.... 

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