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Article: LEAD IN THE AIR FORMS CLOUDS MORE EASILY
- Article from:
- Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society
- Article date:
- July 1, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright American Meteorological Society Jul 2009. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Human activity, such as coal burn- ing, construction, and even small airplanes flying at altitudes where clouds form, is a known contributor of lead to the atmosphere. Wanting to know how this lead affects cloud development, researchers from the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest Laboratory sampled clouds, as well as making some of their own, for answers. What they discovered was a direct relation between lead and the formation of ice crystals that foster clouds, a finding that could dull the effects of global warming.
"We know that the vast majority of lead in the atmosphere comes from man-made sources," says atmospheric chemist Dan Cziczo, the study's lead author. "And now we show ...