Earlier this month after days of gruelling negotiations in Paris, countries around the world came out with a commitment to reduce fossil fuel emissions, in an attempt to stop global warming.
However, researchers from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently came out with findings that could possible shock climate change negotiators: burning some types of fossil fuels can actually help cool, not warm, the Earth.
Lead researcher Kate Marvel, a climatologist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, explained that burning fossil fuel that releases sulphur-containing aerosols into the atmosphere, such as diesel used in vehicles, can actually keep the temperature low in some parts of our planet.
"Take sulphate aerosols, which are created from burning fossil fuels and contribute to atmospheric cooling. They are more or less confined to the northern hemisphere, where most of us live and emit pollution," Marvel explained in an article published on The Daily Mail.
"There's more land in the northern hemisphere, and land reacts quicker than the ocean does to these atmospheric changes," she added.
She also said that while some greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide tend to stay long in the atmosphere and have negative impact on the world's climate, man-made aerosol only stay for a short time and actually help reflect sunlight back into space over areas where they are produced.
For instance, Marvel said aerosols released during volcanic eruptions are already "well known" to cool the Earth's surface.
The researchers from the space agency also warned that climate models being used right now to predict the rise of global temperature may have been "too simple."
"As part of that calculation, researchers have relied on simplifying assumptions when accounting for the temperature impacts of climate drivers other than carbon dioxide, such as tiny particles in the atmosphere known as aerosols, for example," Marvel was quoted by The Express is saying.
