How Does Sulphur Dioxide Cause Climate Change

Sulphur dioxide is a colourless gas with a nasty smell. It reacts with other substance easily to form wet deposition and also dry deposition such as sulphuric acid and sulphate particles. Sulphur dioxide can be produced naturally and also by human activities. Volcanic eruptions release a large amount of sulphur dioxide into the air. One time of volcanic eruption that release sulphur dioxide into the air is enough to causes climate change. Besides, hot spring will also emit sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere. Sulphur dioxide is also released from the biological decay process. According to studies, 99% of sulphur dioxide in the atmosphere is emitted by human activities. Sulphur dioxide can be found at very high level around places like petrol

It is a free radical, so it has an unpaired electron. It is readily oxidised in the atmosphere to form nitrogen dioxide. Naturally, nitric oxide is formed during lightning in thunderstorms. Besides, combustion of fuels in the condition of high temperature (above1300°C) allows the oxidation of some nitrogen gas in the air to form nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is also produced during the internal combustion in piston engines, gas turbines, furnaces and boilers. This is because there is mixture of nitrogen and oxygen at high temperature in these combustion systems. In addition, nitric oxide is also released through the burning of plant materials as all plants contain

As the leaves of the crops are being exposed to the acid rain, the protective waxy coating of the leaves are damaged by the acid rain. This causes the evaporation of water and gas exchange to be interrupted. As a consequence, many process such as photosynthesis cannot be carried out. So, this will affect the yield of crops. Besides, the nutritional value of the plants may also be lowered due to acid deposition. Soil contains minerals that are required by plants for healthy growth. When the acid rain falls to the soil, acid rain will dissolve the nutrients and replace the metallic ions with hydrogen. This causes the leaching of nutrients such as potassium, calcium and magnesium out of the soil. When the plants absorb water from the soil, they obtain hydrogen instead of the nutrients. Therefore, this slows down the growth of the plants as they do not have enough nutrients. In more serious cases, the plants will die due to the lack of