By Erik Derr (staff@latinospost.com) | First Posted: Mar 01, 2013 08:04 PM EST

Researchers from the University of Colorado Boulder have found volcanoes affect global climate conditions much more than previously thought.

The group of scientist were searching for reasons Earth did not heat up as much as the scientific community expected it to between.

The prevailing belief had been that industrial development in Asian countries were responsible for the cooling, the biggest culprits in the minds of many researchers being India and China. It's believed industrial sulfur dioxide emissions in the two countries rose 60 percent from 2000 to 2010 through coal burning, said lead study author Ryan Neely. He explained small amounts of sulfur dioxide emissions from Earth's surface rise 12 to 20 miles into the stratospheric aerosol layer of the atmosphere, where chemical reactions create sulfuric acid and water particles that reflect sunlight back to space - which in turn cool the planet. 

Neely said previous observations suggested increases in stratospheric aerosols since 2000 counterbalanced as much as 25 percent of the warming that scientists ascribe to human greenhouse gas emissions.

A news release from the university said the new data, "essentially exonerate Asia, including India and China," from any blame for the latest cooling trend.

The study "indicates it is emissions from small to moderate volcanoes that have been slowing the warming of the planet," said Neely, a researcher at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, a joint venture of CU-Boulder and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.  

The new project was undertaken in part to resolve the conflicting results of two other recent studies, one of which by a NOAA researcher pushed the hypothesis that aerosol levels in the stratosphere resulted from the sulfur dioxide emissions from Asia.  A 2011 study led by Jean Paul Vernier from NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, demonstrated even moderate volcanic eruptions play a role in increasing particulates in the stratosphere.

While both small and moderate volcanoes mask some of the human-caused warming of the planet, larger volcanoes can have a significantly larger effect, said Brian Toon of CU-Boulder's Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences. For instance, when Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted in 1991, it expelled millions of tons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere --- and that ended up cooling the Earth slightly for the next several years.

"The biggest implication here is that scientists need to pay more attention to small and moderate volcanic eruptions when trying to understand changes in Earth's climate," said Toon. 

"But overall these eruptions are not going to counter the greenhouse effect," he said. "Emissions of volcanic gases go up and down, helping to cool or heat the planet, while greenhouse gas emissions from human activity just continue to go up."

© 2015 Latinos Post. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.