Efforts to cut air pollution on the high seas may have led to an unintended side effect — speeding up global warming.
That’s according to a study published Monday in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.
The authors looked at environmental regulations, introduced in 2020 by the International Maritime Organization, that sought to reduce the amount of sulfur pumped out by ships worldwide.
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They found the rules may have inadvertently raised global temperatures by as much as 0.04 degree Celsius, or about 0.07 degree Fahrenheit, since 2020 because of the way sulfur helps clouds cool the Earth.
