Notes
1 Veerabhadran Ramanathan and Gregory Carmichael, “Global and Regional Climate Changes Due to Black Carbon,” Nature Geoscience, 1,2008. Mark Jacobson, “Shortterm Effects of Controlling Fossil-fuel Soot, Biofuel Soot and Gases, and Methane on Climate, Arctic Ice, and Air Pollution Health,” Journal of Geophysical Research 115, DOI:10.1029/2009jd013795. Tami Bond et al., “Bounding the Role of Black Carbon in the Climate System: A Scientific Assessment,” Journal of Geophysical Research, 15 Jan. 2013. This study is the most recent global assessment, confirming that black carbon is the second largest contributor.
2 Veerabhadran Ramanathan and Yangyang Xu, PNAS, 2010, and UNEP/WMO, 2011, Integrated Assessment of Black Carbon and Tropospheric Ozone. This report also estimated that 16 actions—ranging from capture of fugitive methane from coal mining to increasing access to cleaner cookstoves—would reduce black carbon and methane emissions enough to reduce the likely mid-century temperature increase by about half.
3 S.S. Lim et al., “A Comparative Risk Assessment of Burden of Disease and Injury Attributable to 67 Risk Factors and Risk Factor Clusters in 21 Regions, 1990–2010: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010,” The Lancet, vol. 380, no. 9859, 15 December 2012. DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61766-8.
4 Jonathan Banks, “Barriers and Opportunities for Reducing Methane Emissions from Coal Mines,” Report from the Clean Air Task Force, September 2012.
5 Disclaimer: Both authors have both been involved in Project Surya, and one of us (Ramanathan) continues to lead the project as principal investigator.
6 Figure from website http://www.huskpowersystems.com/; accessed March 2, 2013.
7 Analysis based on The Index of Global Philanthropy and Remittances, Hudson Institute, 2012.
Jessica Seddon is founder and managing director of the research and advisory network Okapi, Chennai, India; head of Knowledge Management for the Villgro Innovations Foundation; and senior research advisor for the Indian Institute for Human Settlements. She was previously a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow working on air quality management, and she has worked at the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, and Inter-American Development Bank.
Veerabhadran Ramanathan is Distinguished Professor of Climate and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of California at San Diego and UNESCO professor of climate and policy at TERI University, India. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. He chaired the Committee on Strategic Advice on the US Climate Change Science Program and was the vice-chair of the UNEP/WMO report on SLCPs.
