The cascade of global trade to large climate forcing over the Tibetan Plateau glaciers

Kan Yi, Jing Meng, Haozhe Yang, Cenlin He, Daven K. Henze, Junfeng Liu (), Dabo Guan, Zhu Liu, Lin Zhang, Xi Zhu, Yanli Cheng and Shu Tao
Additional contact information
Kan Yi: Peking University
Jing Meng: University of College London
Haozhe Yang: Peking University
Cenlin He: National Center for Atmospheric Research
Daven K. Henze: University of Colorado at Boulder
Junfeng Liu: Peking University
Dabo Guan: University of East Anglia
Zhu Liu: Tsinghua University
Lin Zhang: School of Physics, Peking University
Xi Zhu: Peking University
Yanli Cheng: Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences
Shu Tao: Peking University

Nature Communications, 2019, vol. 10, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Black carbon (BC) aerosols constitute unique and important anthropogenic climate forcers that potentially accelerate the retreat of glaciers over the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau (HTP). Here we show that a large amount of BC emissions produced in India and China—a region of BC emissions to which the HTP is more vulnerable compared with other regions—are related to the consumption of goods and services in the USA and Europe through international trade. These processes lead to a virtual transport pathway of BC from distant regions to the HTP glaciers. From a consumption perspective, the contribution from India to the HTP glaciers shows a rapid increasing trend while the contributions from the USA, Europe, and China decreased over the last decade. International trade aggravates the BC pollution over the HTP glaciers and may cause significant climate change there. Global efforts toward reducing the cascading of BC emissions to Asia, especially the Indian subcontinent, are urgently needed.

Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10876-9 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:10:y:2019:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-019-10876-9

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-10876-9

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().