Is Asia's cleaner air driving global warming?

South China Morning Post

19-07-2025

Global warming has picked up pace since around 2010, leading to the recent string of record hot years. Why this is happening is still unclear and is among the biggest questions in climate science today. Our new study reveals that reductions in air pollution – particularly in
China and East Asia – are a key reason for this faster warming.
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Clean-up of sulphur emissions from global shipping has been implicated in past research. But that clean-up only began in 2020, so it is considered too weak to explain the full extent of this acceleration. Nasa researchers have suggested that changes in clouds could play a role, either through reductions in cloud cover in the tropics or over the North Pacific.
One factor that has not been well quantified, however, is the effect of monumental efforts by countries in
East Asia , notably China, to combat air pollution and improve public health through strict air quality policies. There has already been a 75 per cent reduction in East Asian sulphur dioxide emissions since around 2013, and that clean-up effort picked up pace just as global warming began accelerating.
Our study addresses the link between East Asian air quality improvements and global temperature, building on the efforts of eight teams of climate modellers across the world.
Women in traditional Chinese attire use an umbrella to shield themselves from the sun in Shanghai on July 4. Photo: Reuters
We have found that polluted air may have been masking the full effects of global warming. Cleaner air could now be revealing more of the human-induced global warming from greenhouse gases.