London, UK: Every year, approximately 7 million people die from air pollution. A large portion of this pollution is made up of microscopic particles suspended in the air that, when inhaled, can lead to cancer, heart and lung disorders, and other illnesses.

Tiny atmospheric particles can also inevitably lead to clouds. Aerosols are the name given to these particles as a group whether they are sulphate from industrial chimneys or sea salt crystals from the Southern Ocean. Only aerosols can cause atmospheric moisture to condense into cloud droplets. These droplets are more abundant and clouds are more reflective of sunlight and potentially longer-lasting due to the aerosols that fossil fuel burning adds to the atmosphere.

All of this causes clouds to scatter more sunlight back into space as opposed to absorbing it as normal. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) came to the conclusion that man-made aerosols cool the climate and partially block some of the heat caused by greenhouse gases as a result of this.

Although this may seem like good news, there is no need to rejoice. Aerosols are relatively transient, as is their cooling impact. The aerosols released as a result of air pollution will stop having an impact in a month, but the CO2 that is currently released into the atmosphere by cars and coal-fired power plants will remain there for centuries.

Accordingly, the world will continue to warm even after we stop producing aerosols because greenhouse gases in our atmosphere will continue to do so. Also, a recent study discovered that the impact of air pollution on cloud reflectivity may be more than previously thought.

Delegates assembled in Sharm El-Sheikh for COP27, the most recent UN climate change summit, must fight even harder to curb the burning of fossil fuels if the extent to which air pollution masks the greenhouse effect is, in fact, greater.

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