12 AUGUST 2002: ‘CONGRATULATIONS
HUMANS, YOU ARE NOW CONTROLLING THE WEATHER!’ OR, ‘HOW NOW, BROWN CLOUD.’

‘Asian Brown Cloud’ poses
global threat

The lives of millions
of people are at risk, both from the toxic haze and the weather change
it brings, the study shows

By CNN’s Marianne Bray and
wire reports

August 12, 2002 Posted:
8:33 AM EDT (1233 GMT)

HONG KONG, China — A dense
blanket of pollution, dubbed the “Asian Brown Cloud,” is hovering over
South Asia, with scientists warning it could kill millions of people in
the region, and pose a global threat.

    In the
biggest-ever study of the phenomenon, 200 scientists warned that the cloud,
estimated to be two miles (three kilometers) thick,

is responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths a year from respiratory
disease.

    By slashing
the sunlight that reaches the ground by 10 to 15 percent, the choking smog
has also altered the region’s climate, cooling the ground while heating
the atmosphere, scientists said on Monday.

    The
potent haze lying over the entire Indian subcontinent — from Sri Lanka
to Afghanistan — has led to some erratic weather, sparking
flooding in Bangladesh, Nepal and northeastern India, but drought in Pakistan
and northwestern India.

    “There
are also global implications, not least because a pollution parcel like
this, which stretches three kilometers high, can travel half way round
the globe in a week, ” U.N. Environment Program chief Klaus Toepfer told
a news conference in London on Sunday.

    The U.N.’s
preliminary report comes three weeks before the Earth Summit in Johannesburg,
which opens on August 26, where all eyes will be on how not to overburden
the planet.

Global threat

While haze hovers over other
parts of the world, such as above America and Europe, what surprised scientists
was just how far the cloud extended, and how much black carbon was in it,
according to A P Mitra from India’s National Physical Laboratory.

    While
many scientists once thought that only lighter greenhouse gases, such as
carbon dioxide, could travel across the Earth, they now say that aerosol
clouds can too.

    “Biomass
burning” from forest fires, vegetation clearing and fossil fuel was just
as much to blame for the shrouding haze as dirty industries from Asia’s
great cities, the study found.

    A large
part of the aerosol cloud comes from inefficient cookers, where fuels such
as cowdung and kerosene are used to cook food in many parts of Asia, says
Mitra.

Acid rain

Using data from ships, planes
and satellites to study Asia’s haze during the northern winter months of
1995 to 2000, scientists were able to track its journey to pristine parts
of the world, such as the Maldives, to see how it affected climate.

    They
discovered not only that the smog cut sunlight, heating the atmosphere,
but also that it created acid rain, a serious threat to crops and trees,
as well as contaminating oceans and hurting agriculture.

    “It was
much larger than we thought,” said Mitra. The report suggested the pollution
could be cutting India’s winter rice harvest by as much as 10 percent.

    The report
calculated that the cloud — 80 percent of which was man-made — could
cut rainfall over northwest Pakistan, Afghanistan, western China and western
central Asia by up to 40 percent.

    While
scientists say it is just early days and they need more scientific data,
they do say the regional and global impact of the haze will intensify over
the next 30 years, with an estimated five billion people living in Asia.

    Nobel
laureate Paul Crutzen — one of the first scientists to identify the causes
of the hole in the ozone layer and also involved in the U.N. report —
said up to two million people in India alone were dying each year from
atmospheric pollution.

    In the
next phase of the project, scientists will collect data from the entire
Asian region, over more seasons with more observation sites and refine
their techniques.

    But because
the lifetime of pollutants are short and they can be rained out, scientists
are hopeful that if Asians use more efficient ways of burning fuel, such
as better stoves, and cleaner sources of energy, time has not run out.

The Associated Press &
Reuters contributed to this report.