The refreshing smell of pine trees may actually do more than just make cars or your home smell good. A new study has shown that the scents given off by pine trees can help cool the atmosphere.
The new discovery may seem like a good reason to start stocking up on Air Wick, Glade or Fabreze brands of air fresheners, but hold on. Unfortunately, only real pine trees in large pine forests can actually make a difference. The researchers have found that the scented vapors released by pine trees can produce particles that have the ability to reflect sunlight back into space and promote the formation of clouds. These two mechanisms play a large part in slowing down global warming.
The international team of researchers from the U.S., Finland and Germany conducted the study. The team published its findings in the online journal Nature.
"In many forested regions, you can go and observe particles apparently form from thin air. They're not emitted from anything, they just appear," said Joel Thornton, an associate professor of atmospheric sciences from the University of Washington and one of the study's co-authors.
The vapors released by pine trees have been studied by numerous researchers the past few decades. These vapors often include tiny particles that range from 1 nanometer to 100 nanometers in size. These small particles have been proven to be capable of reflecting sunlight. Moreover, the large particles are the perfect size for jump-starting water condensation, which is necessary for cloud formation.
Aerosols that have been detected over large boreal forests may play an important part in temperature control. In fact, climate change experts have said that these aerosols are one of the biggest mysteries that may have a dramatic effect on climate change and global warming. The researchers found the the aerosols are produced due to a chemical reaction that involves vapors released by pine trees.
"The radical is so desperate to become a regular molecule again that it reacts with itself. The new oxygen breaks off a hydrogen from a neighboring carbon to keep for itself, and then more oxygen comes in to where the hydrogen was broken off," said Thornton.
The researchers who conducted the study has also found that the pine-scented particles can interact with atmospheric ozone. The free radicals in the aerosols rapidly react with oxygen causing a chain reaction that releases more oxygen molecules. The entire reaction causes the formation of more particles that are large enough to effect local climate conditions.
"I think unravelling that chemistry is going to have some profound impacts on how we describe atmospheric chemistry generally," Thornton said.
