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BBC News - More sulphur trails from the stratosphere Page 1 of 4 PIN BBC TO YOUR TASKBAR BY DRAGGING THIS ICON TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SCREEN Close SCIENCE ENVIRONMENT 21 July 2011 Last updated at 14:10 ET Richard Black Environment correspondent More from Richard Follow Richard on Twitter More sulphur trails from the stratosphere COMMENTS (35) Tiny aerosol particles in the atmosphere are perhaps the second most important way - after greenhouse gas emissions - in which human activities are changing the Earths climate. But changing it how? The last major Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report in 2007 concluded that aerosols remain the dominant uncertainty in radiative forcing - partially because of the direct effects the particles have, such as reflecting and scattering the Suns energy, and partly because they can affect cloud formation. Since that report was compiled, researchers have gone deeper into the known unknowns of aerosols - one of the main aims being to build a picture of how they behave naturally, in order that any man-made perturbation can be more accurately assessed. The satellite era has made things easier, with instruments on board orbiting platforms such as Calipso deploying lidars and other instruments capable of sensing how much material is present at what kinds of altitudes. But still, obtaining a global picture is not easy - and to make things worse, observations have begun in earnest during the very period in which human activities are changing the atmospheres aerosol load. But scientific groups are on the case. A couple of weeks ago, we had some insights into how increased coal-burning - notably from China - could be pumping the stuff into the atmosphere so quickly as to ameliorate the temperature rise from greenhouse gas emissions. Last week, a different research group