How aerosols brighten clouds — and cool the planet | Sarah J. Doherty

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4.1 • 11.9K Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2024

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

Here's a conundrum: the same aerosol pollutants that harm human health also help cool the climate, says atmospheric scientist Sarah J. Doherty. Is there a way to clean up the air without warming the planet? Exploring the unintended consequences of reducing air pollution, she makes the case for a better understanding of marine cloud brightening — or intentionally adding sea salt aerosols to clouds over the ocean, which could reflect sunlight back into space and potentially reduce global warming.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective.
0:02.0	Audio Collective.
0:04.0	You're listening to Ted Talks Daily,
0:09.0	you're listening to Ted Talks Daily,
0:11.0	where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.
0:15.0	I'm your host, Elise Hugh.
0:17.0	All right, this is going to sound kind of counterintuitive,
0:20.0	as it was a total surprise to me.
0:22.0	There is some human activity on the planet
0:24.8	that is actually cooling the atmosphere. Yep. In our 2024 talk at TED
0:30.2	atmospheric scientist Sarah Do Hardy alerts us to how the environmental effort to stop
0:36.4	dangerous aerosol admissions could have serious unintended consequences.
0:42.4	And what can be done about it?
0:43.8	We'll dive into this talk right after a break.
0:49.1	Like TED Talks, you should check out the Ted Radio Hour with NPR.
0:53.0	Stay tuned after this talk to hear a sneak peek of this week's episode.
0:57.0	And now our TED Talk of the Day.
1:01.0	So I'm a climate scientist and based on that I bet you think I'm here to tell you
1:06.9	about all the ways that we're making the climate warmer. But I'm not actually going to do that today
1:12.1	because I think you already know that part of the story.
1:15.0	I want to tell you instead a story about unintended consequences.
1:20.0	For many of us, it's really easy to forget that in addition to emitting a lot of greenhouse gases,
	...

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