Meteoric smoke fallout over the Holocene epoch revealed by iridium and platinum in Greenland ice

Gabrielli, Paolo; Barbante, Carlo; Plane, J. M. C.; Varga, Anita; Hong, Sungmin; Cozzi, Giulio; Gaspari, Vania; Planchon, F.; Cairns, Warren R. L.; Ferrari, Christophe; Crutzen, Paul J.; Cescon, Paolo; Boutron, Claude F.

doi:10.1038/nature03137

Cited by 133 publications

(158 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…It is interesting to compare rocket particulate emissions to incoming cosmic dust from space that also affect the stratosphere. The influx of meteoritic dust is about 20 kt per year [Bardeen et al, 2008;Gabrielli et al, 2004] while rockets currently emit about 5 kt of submicron particulate.…”

Section: Emissionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radiative forcing caused by rocket engine emissions

Ross

Sheaffer

2014

Earth's Future

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Space transportation plays an important and growing role in Earth's economic system. Rockets uniquely emit gases and particles directly into the middle and upper atmosphere where exhaust from hundreds of launches accumulates, changing atmospheric radiation patterns. The instantaneous radiative forcing (RF) caused by major rocket engine emissions CO 2 , H 2 O, black carbon (BC), and Al 2 O 3 (alumina) is estimated. Rocket CO 2 and H 2 O emissions do not produce significant RF. BC and alumina emissions, under some scenarios, have the potential to produce significant RF. Absorption of solar flux by BC is likely the main RF source from rocket launches. In a new finding, alumina particles, previously thought to cool the Earth by scattering solar flux back to space, absorb outgoing terrestrial longwave radiation, resulting in net positive RF. With the caveat that BC and alumina microphysics are poorly constrained, we find that the present-day RF from rocket launches equals 16 ± 8 mW m −2 . The relative contributions from BC, alumina, and H 2 O are 70%, 28%, and 2%. respectively. The pace of rocket launches is predicted to grow and space transport RF could become comparable to global aviation RF in coming decades. Improved understanding of rocket emission RF requires more sophisticated modeling and improved data describing particle microphysics.

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Section: Emissionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Radiative forcing caused by rocket engine emissions

Ross

Sheaffer

2014

Earth's Future

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“…The estimates of how much meteoric material enters the earth's atmosphere vary from 5 to 400 tons/day (Gabrielli et al, 2004;Love and Brownlee, 1993;Mathews et al, 2001;Ceplecha et al, 1998). There are two reasons for this wide spread of estimates.…”

Section: Amount Of Meteoric Materialsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distribution of meteoric smoke – sensitivity to microphysical properties and atmospheric conditions

2006

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Abstract. Meteoroids entering the Earth's atmosphere experience strong deceleration and ablate, whereupon the resulting material is believed to re-condense to nanometre-size "smoke particles". These particles are thought to be of great importance for many middle atmosphere phenomena, such as noctilucent clouds, polar mesospheric summer echoes, metal layers, and heterogeneous chemistry. The properties and distribution of meteoric smoke depend on poorly known or highly variable factors such as the amount, composition and velocity of incoming meteoric material, the efficiency of coagulation, and the state and circulation of the atmosphere. This work uses a one-dimensional microphysical model to investigate the sensitivities of meteoric smoke properties to these poorly known or highly variable factors. The resulting uncertainty or variability of meteoric smoke quantities such as number density, mass density, and size distribution are determined. It is found that the two most important factors are the efficiency of the coagulation and background vertical wind. The seasonal variation of the vertical wind in the mesosphere implies strong global and temporal variations in the meteoric smoke distribution. This contrasts the simplistic picture of a homogeneous global meteoric smoke layer, which is currently assumed in many studies of middle atmospheric phenomena. In particular, our results suggest a very low number of nanometre-sized smoke particles at the summer mesopause where they are thought to serve as condensation nuclei for noctilucent clouds.

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“…Despite their tiny dimensions, it has been suggested that MSPs play a significant role in a host of atmospheric phenomena such as the nucleation of noctilucent clouds, the mesospheric metal atom chemistry, the transport of meteoric material to the ground, and the formation of nitric acid trihydrate-particles in polar stratospheric clouds [e.g., Plane, 2003;Gabrielli et al, 2004;Voigt et al, 2005]. However, due to the above mentioned tiny dimensions, measurements of MSPs have been very difficult to obtain.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Meteor smoke particle properties derived from Arecibo incoherent scatter radar observations

Strelnikova

Rapp

Raizada

et al. 2007

Geophysical Research Letters

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[1] We present a new algorithm to infer information on the properties of charged meteoric smoke particles (MSPs) from the shape of incoherent scatter radar spectra. We show that in the presence of charged MSPs the spectrum can be approximated as the sum of two Lorentzians. These two distinct spectral lines correspond to two diffusion modes in the D-region plasma, i.e., one due the presence of positive ions and one because of heavy charged MSPs. The widths and amplitudes of these two spectral lines yield information on the radius and number density (the latter only for positively charged particles) of the charged MSPs. We apply this new algorithm to measurements obtained with the 430 MHz ISR at Arecibo and demonstrate that the observed spectra indeed bear the features anticipated in the presence of charged MSPs. Resulting values of retrieved MSP number densities and radii fall well within the range of values expected from models and independent in situ observations. Citation: Strelnikova, I., M. Rapp, S. Raizada, and M. Sulzer (2007), Meteor smoke particle properties derived from Arecibo incoherent scatter radar observations, Geophys. Res. Lett., 34, L15815,

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Meteoric smoke fallout over the Holocene epoch revealed by iridium and platinum in Greenland ice

Cited by 133 publications

References 29 publications

Radiative forcing caused by rocket engine emissions

Radiative forcing caused by rocket engine emissions

Distribution of meteoric smoke – sensitivity to microphysical properties and atmospheric conditions

Meteor smoke particle properties derived from Arecibo incoherent scatter radar observations

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