negative feedback, definition of

Air pollution occurs when the air contains gases, dust, fumes or odour in harmful amounts. That is, amounts which could be harmful to the health or comfort of humans and animals or which could cause damage to plants and materials.

The substances that cause air pollution are called pollutants. Pollutants that are pumped into our atmosphere and directly pollute the air are called primary pollutants. Primary pollutant examples include carbon monoxide from car exhausts and sulfur dioxide from the combustion of coal.

Further pollution can arise if primary pollutants in the atmosphere undergo chemical reactions. The resulting compounds are called secondary pollutants. Photochemical smog is an example of this.

• Demystifying feedback.
  Guest post by Nick Stokes, People outside climate science seem drawn to feedback analogies for climate behaviour. Climate scientists sometimes make use of them too, although they are not part of GCMs. But it gets tangled. In fact, all that the feedback...
• Another negative climate feedback: more CO2 = more plants = more aerosols = cooling
  Recall a couple of days ago that I posted on the aerosols released by trees: Those dirty trees: why hasn’t the EPA called for trees to be regulated? Now, from the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis  comes a cause-effect … Continue...
• Dronning Maud Meets the Little Ice Age
  Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach I have to learn to keep my blood pressure down … this new paper, “Abrupt onset of the Little Ice Age triggered by volcanism and sustained by sea-ice/ocean feedbacks“, hereinafter M2012, has me shaking...
• New peer reviewed paper: clouds have large negative cooling effect on Earth’s radiation budget
  Oh dear, now we have three peer reviewed papers (Lindzen and Choi, Spencer and Braswell, and now Richard P. Allan) based on observations that show a net negative feedback for clouds, and a strong one at that. What will Trenberth … Continue reading...
• New peer reviewed paper: clouds have large negative-feedback cooling effect on Earth’s radiation budget
  Oh dear, now we have three peer reviewed papers (Lindzen and Choi, Spencer and Braswell, and now Richard P. Allan) based on observations that show a net negative feedback for clouds, and a strong one at that. What will Trenberth … Continue reading...

Related Tags: climate, weather