Yale Environment 360: It rises from the chimneys of mansions and from simple hut stoves. It rises from forest fires and the tail pipes of diesel-fueled trucks rolling down the highway, and from brick kilns and ocean liners and gas flares. Every day, from every occupied continent, a curtain of soot rises into the sky.
What soot does once it reaches the atmosphere has long been a hard question to answer. It's not that scientists don't know anything about the physics and chemistry of atmospheric soot. Just the opposite:...