Six eminent climate specialists have revealed the unpleasant conclusion that scientists who have been analyzing the outcomes of China's ten-year, extremely successful "war on pollution" have come to.
According to Chinese government data and health research, the campaign to outlaw pollution—which is mostly caused by sulphur dioxide (SO2) emitted from coal plants—has reduced SO2 emissions by almost 90% and prevented hundreds of thousands of deaths. The IPCC highlighted the connection between lowering sulfur dioxide emissions and global warming in a report from 2021, stating that the average global temperature would have already increased by 1.6 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels in the absence of the solar shield caused by SO2 pollution.
Over the past ten years, temperatures in some industrial Chinese towns may have been influenced more by the "unmasking" of air pollution than by the actual warming caused by greenhouse gases, according to the experts.The scientists cautioned that if other heavily polluted regions of the world, including India and the Middle East, followed China's lead in clearing the sky of sulphur dioxide and the harmful aerosols it generates, they would witness comparable spikes in heat.
Drawing on previously unreported statistics on increases in temperatures and SO2 emissions over the past ten years and verified by environmental scientists, the Reuters analysis of the Chinese data presents the most comprehensive picture yet of how this phenomenon is manifesting in the real world.About the issue of unmasking globally, Reuters spoke with 12 experts in total, four of whom had written or reviewed parts on air pollution in IPCC reports.They added that no climate scientist has suggested that the world should give up on combating air pollution, a known threat that the World Health Organization estimates results in roughly 7 million premature deaths annually, the majority of which occur in poorer nations.