The climate effects of anthropogenic aerosols have masked some of the warming induced by GHGs¹ along with some impacts of that warming². These temperature effects may be beneficial but are almost certainly overwhelmed by aerosols’ negative health impacts³. Recent analyses of economic impacts have concluded that warming harms economies in warm climates, but provides economic benefits in cold climates⁴. Here we investigate whether aerosol-induced cooling would have a positive effect on less wealthy economies in hotter regions and a negative effect on wealthier economies in colder regions. Climate simulations over the historical period both with and without anthropogenic aerosol emissions, using a fully coupled ocean and atmosphere climate model, indicate that in year 2010 anthropogenic aerosol emissions were cooling the Earth by 0.72 ± 0.02 °C relative to a scenario without such emissions. Due to opposing economic impacts in different regions, the net economic impact of aerosol-induced cooling is likely to be small at the global scale. However, these results suggest that the cooling effects of anthropogenic aerosols benefit developing tropical economies while harming developed high-latitude economies, and thus the temperature effects of past aerosol emissions have probably diminished global economic inequality.

人为气溶胶的气候影响掩盖了温室气体引起的一些变暖¹以及这种变暖的一些影响²。这些温度影响可能是有益的，但几乎肯定会被气溶胶对健康的负面影响³压倒。最近对经济影响的分析得出的结论是，变暖在温暖气候下会损害经济，但在寒冷气候下会带来经济效益⁴. 在这里，我们调查气溶胶引起的降温是否会对较热地区较不富裕的经济体产生积极影响，对较冷地区较富裕的经济体产生负面影响。使用完全耦合的海洋和大气气候模型对历史时期有和没有人为气溶胶排放的气候模拟表明，相对于没有此类排放的情景，2010 年人为气溶胶排放使地球冷却了 0.72 ± 0.02 °C。由于不同地区的经济影响相反，气溶胶引起的冷却的净经济影响在全球范围内可能很小。然而，这些结果表明，人为气溶胶的冷却效应有利于发展中的热带经济体，同时损害发达的高纬度经济体，