Regional Climate Influenced by Radiation Dimming - from Aerosol Plumes

This article is worth reading if you are interested in regional scale climate issues, especially in the Australian and SE Asian context.

http://www.graceresearch.com/KeithPotts.pdf

and the abstract appears below:

Apparitions of seasonal and random anthropogenic, continental scale, aerosol plumes
now occur across the globe. Seasonal plumes usually exist for several months and vary
significantly in extent and optical depth inter annually. I show that: the aerosol optical
depth of the South East Asian Plume correlates with four characteristics of drought in
south eastern Australia; the aerosol index of the Middle East Plume correlates negatively
with rainfall in Darfur; and the volume of tephra ejected by volcanoes in south east Asia
correlates: negatively with rainfall in Australia and water inflows into the Murray River;
and positively with ENSO events. I conclude that south eastern Asian aerosol plumes are
the cause of drought in south eastern Australia and El Niño/ENSO events and propose a
new component of surface aerosol radiative forcing, Regional Dimming, which forces the
Inter Tropical Convergence Zone, Hadley and Walker Cells into abnormal seasonal
positions causing climate change.



The article is well researched and appears to offer some plausible options on the thinking about climate, drought and related issues in both north and southern Australia. Lets not toss out ENSO and similar issues, but this does seem to explain a few issues at the regional scale. [photo of Mt Pinatubo erupting - copyright NASA]

It also offers some critical thought about the developing situation in eastern Asia as it industrialises. Beijing and eastern China already is "dim" in a radiation sense - just visit the place to realise how much the sun is obscured by smog. How much worse can it get, especially as the forecasts for the growth and number of mega cities include many in that region, over the next 20 years?