NASA Finds that Most of USA's Aerosol Pollutants Originate from Burning Fossil Fuels

A new study has been conducted by NASA to determine the sources of most of North America's ground pollution, such as aerosols, and has found that most of it comes from the U.S. Previous research has not successfully discovered the sources of pollution and has left researchers to believe that it was into the U.S. from other countries.

Aerosols are particles that float in air and come from dust, fires, volcanoes, and burning fossil fuels. Aerosols are a major source of near-ground pollution. Also, aerosols, particular aerosols that come from fossil fuels are believed to have a cooling effect on the environment and counteract the global warming effect from greenhouse gases. Aerosols have been being regulated in the U.S. since the instatement of the Clean Air act in 1970. However, scientists have been concerned about aerosols from other nations being carried to U.S. by winds. Hence, scientists primarily focused on classifying foreign aerosols.

In previous studies, scientists used an aerosol tracking model to estimate the sources and movements of aerosols all over the globe and to see how many aerosols were arriving in U.S. They tracked the movements of aerosols near the ground to see how much of an impact they had on human health and how global movements of aerosols were violating environmental regulations. However, the scientists primarily focused on tracking a single type of aerosol like dust and black carbon.

NASA's new study is the first to analyze the composition and origin of all aerosols moving across the U.S. The study was led by Mian Chin, an atmospheric scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Again, Chin and his research team used a computer model of known air chemistry and wind patterns to trace aerosols in a region. But this time they traced every aerosol from fossil fuel, biofuel combustion, biomass burning, to aerosols from volcanoes, desert dust, and sea salt. They traced every aerosol back to its original source.