Global dimming and its impacts

Global dimming determines the drop in solar energy which is reaching earth’s surface. This phenomenon was firstly observed by Israel researchers. It was found out that between the years 1950 to 1980, amount of solar energy reaching earth’s surface had dropped 60% in British Isles, 30% in Russia, 10% in US and 9% in Antarctica.

The cause of global dimming is accumulation of bigger man-made particles in air. As earth takes some amount of light from sun and rest is reflected back to the cosmos. This reflection of light is done by water droplets present in atmosphere.

As clouds contain most of the water of atmosphere, it contains tiny droplets of water which reflects light. As in air, impurities like Sulphur dioxide and aerosols are accumulating due to pollution. This polluted air when holds water particles, impurities too act as liquid particles making the clouds much bigger. Thus these clouds act as a giant mirror which reflects light back to space. Although global dimming is like dimming of a light source which will obviously cause discomfort so are its negative impacts. With negative impacts, this phenomenon has some positive perks too!

Negative impacts:

As lesser light is available to earth, it’s causing lesser evaporation and thus lesser rain. In 1984, Sahel in Northern Africa didn’t witnessed monsoon for a decade causing death of many people due to famine. Scientists claim that the effect of global dimming will not be for millions of people but it will affect billions of people with it. Asian monsoons are reason of rainfall for almost half of the world. It is assumed that if Asian rainfall started affecting adversely due to global dimming, it will affect nearly three billion people of the world!

Positive impact:

After reading about the deadly impacts of global dimming, it’s obviously difficult to believe that it will possess some positive impacts. Positive side of this coin is that it saves us from “global warming”. Global warming is surely an issue of concern to our survival. When more light is reflected back i.e lesser is the rise in the temperature of earth. So, it contributes to control global warming. If this phenomenon of global dimming will vanish, it’ll increase the temperature of earth by one degree centigrade which takes several decades to increase. Thus its obvious global dimming is saving us from much larger problems!

It’s actually a silent killer which is a threat to human life. In both the cases, either global dimming or global warming, human species have to witness ill effects. Only the difference is that global warming can take away lives immediately if global dimming vanishes. On the other hand, global dimming act as a sweet poison which will not kill immediately but eventually!