污染：风暴强化剂
Air Pollution Gives Storm Clouds a Stronger, Longer Life
污染：风暴强化剂
More particulate matter in the air can build stronger, longer-lasting thunderstorms over the tropics, leading to more extreme storms.
空气中更多的微粒物会在热带地区构筑出更强劲、更持久的雷暴，从而引致极强的风暴。
播音/撰文 克里斯托弗·因塔利亚塔(Christopher Intagliata)
翻译 Meatle
审校 乔虹
统筹 李轩
Summertime in India can be unbearably hot. "And the first thing you want, is, get me some clouds, to cool down." Sudip Chakraborty grew up there, in Kolkata. Where he developed a childhood fascination with clouds. "And in like three or four months during monsoon time, it was like, rain, rain, all rain. I like the clouds, the rain, the strength they have. Their importance. It's something like I love them, you know?"
印度的夏日的酷热难以忍受。“在这种情况下，你第一时间想到的是躲在云下，凉快一下。”苏迪·查克拉博蒂(Sudip Chakraborty)在加尔各塔(Kolkata)这片土地上长大。童年时，他一直对云痴迷。“在季风肆虐的3到4个月中，降雨似乎永无终止。我喜欢那些云，那些雨，以及蕴含在它们中的力量。我对他们深深着迷，你知道吗？”
His love of water vapor led him to study clouds, as a climate scientist at UC Davis. Clouds, he says, are built of tiny aerosol particles of dust or pollution from fossil fuel burning that suck up water vapor. "Now these cloud particles with time they combine with each other, and become big. And when they become big, due to gravity, they fall out, and we call it rain."
他对水蒸气的热爱使他投入到了对云的研究中，成为了加州大学戴维斯分校的气象学家。他说，云是由空气中的微小尘埃颗粒或化石燃料燃烧后排出的与污染物组成的气溶胶吸收水蒸气后形成的。“云块会随着时间的推移相互融合，变得巨大。由于重力的作用，当它们变得足够大，会从天上掉下来，变成我们所说的雨。”
Chakraborty studied that process in large thunderstorm systems over the tropics, using data from geostationary and circumpolar satellites. And he found that when more aerosols seed the air, like in places with lots of industrial or agricultural pollution, the same amount of water vapor gets absorbed by a larger number of aerosols… meaning tinier-than-usual cloud particle size.
利用同步卫星和极地卫星采集到的数据，查克拉博蒂研究了热带地区大型风暴系统的生命周期。他发现在气溶胶数量更多的空域，比如那些有大量工业或农业污染的地区，同样多的水蒸气被更多的气溶胶吸。这意味着该地区的云团大小比常见的要小。
That's important, because "it makes the cloud bigger and larger and stronger and live longer." Three to 24 hours longer. And "it can produce more extreme storms when the rain finally comes." The study is in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. [Sudip Chakraborty et al., Relative influence of meteorological conditions and aerosols on the lifetime of mesoscale convective systems]
这是一个值得注意的现象，因为“这些小云团结合而成的大云团会更为巨大、强力、持久。”比常规云团的寿命长3-24小时。同时“在降雨时，它会演变为更为极端的风暴。”该研究发表在《美国国家科学院论文集》(the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences)。
A silver lining: he says longer-lasting clouds also reflect more light back into space, which could end up cooling the planet—and at least tap the brakes on climate change.
但这样还是有一些好处的：查克拉博蒂说寿命更长的云层也会将更多的阳光反射到宇宙，从而给地球降温——至少是在气候变化的状况下稍微点一下刹车。
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京ICP备11000850号-1
京公网安备11010502039775号 信息网络传播视听节目许可证0111611号
国家科技基础条件平台