* Astronomy

A new theory to explain global warming was revealed at a meeting at the University of Leicester (UK) and is being considered for publication in the journal "Science First Hand". The controversial theory has nothing to do with burning fossil fuels and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.
According to Vladimir Shaidurov of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the apparent rise in average global temperature recorded by scientists over the last hundred years or so could be due to atmospheric changes that are not connected to human emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of natural gas and oil. Shaidurov explained how changes in the amount of ice crystals at high altitude could damage the layer of thin, high altitude clouds found in the mesosphere that reduce the amount of warming solar radiation reaching the earth's surface.

Shaidurov has used a detailed analysis of the mean temperature change by year for the last 140 years and explains that there was a slight decrease in temperature until the early twentieth century. This flies in the face of current global warming theories that blame a rise in temperature on rising carbon dioxide emissions since the start of the industrial revolution. Shaidurov, however, suggests that the rise, which began between 1906 and 1909, could have had a very different cause, which he believes was the massive Tunguska Event, which rocked a remote part of Siberia, northwest of Lake Baikal on the 30th June 1908.

The Tunguska Event, sometimes known as the Tungus Meteorite is thought to have resulted from an asteroid or comet entering the earth's atmosphere and exploding. The event released as much energy as fifteen one-megaton atomic bombs. As well as blasting an enormous amount of dust into the atmosphere, felling 60 million trees over an area of more than 2000 square kilometres. Shaidurov suggests that this explosion would have caused "considerable stirring of the high layers of atmosphere and change its structure."
Such meteoric disruption was the trigger for the subsequent rise in global temperatures.

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Atmospheric hypotheses' of Earth's global warming
Authors: V. Shaidurov

When analysing the mean-year trend of the Earth's surface temperature for the past 140 years one can discern two sections of monotone linear increase of temperature during two last industrial centuries. The first one begins somewhere in the period 1906-1909. The previous segment demonstrates a weak decrease in the temperature trend, not increase. For explanation of this sudden break we look for a phenomenon of cosmic scale during this time which could have given rise to beginning of global warming with a significant probability.
On the 30th June 1908 Tungus meteorite exploded with the power of ~15 Million tonnes of TNT at an altitude of ~10 km. Such an explosion could cause considerable stirring of the high layers of atmosphere and change its structure in mesosphere. The difference between this mesosphere catastrophe and atmospheric nuclear tests that cause another break in the temperature plot is discussed. The purpose of this report is to open the debate and to encourage discussion among scientists.

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