Greater focus needed on methane leakage from natural gas infrastructure.

Natural gas is seen by many as the future of American energy: a fuel that can provide energy independence and reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the process. However, there has also been confusion about the climate implications of increased use of natural gas for electric power and transportation. We propose and illustrate the use of technology warming potentials as a robust and transparent way to compare the cumulative radiative forcing created by alternative technologies fueled by natural gas and oil or coal by using the best available estimates of greenhouse gas emissions from each fuel cycle (i.

Single-source impact analysis using three-dimensional air quality models.

Isolating the effects of an individual emissions source on secondary air pollutants such as ozone and some components of particulate matter must incorporate complex nonlinear processes, be sensitive to small emissions perturbations, and account for impacts that may occur hundreds of kilometers away. The ability to evaluate these impacts is becoming increasingly important for efficient air quality management. Here, as part of a recent compliance enforcement action for a violation of the Clean Air Act and as an evaluation of ozone response to single-source emissions plumes, two three-dimensional regional photochemical air quality models are used to assess the impact on ozone from approximately 2000 to 3000 excess t/month of nitrogen oxides emitted from a single power plant in Ohio.

Impact of aerosol indirect effect on surface temperature over East Asia.

A regional coupled climate-chemistry-aerosol model is developed to examine the impacts of anthropogenic aerosols on surface temperature and precipitation over East Asia. Besides their direct and indirect reduction of short-wave solar radiation, the increased cloudiness and cloud liquid water generate a substantial downward positive long-wave surface forcing; consequently, nighttime temperature in winter increases by +0.7 degrees C, and the diurnal temperature range decreases by -0.