The residents of Beijing and Delhi are not the only ones feeling the effects of Asian air pollution ? an unwanted by product of coal-fired economic development. The continent's tainted air is known to cross the Pacific Ocean, adding to home grown air-quality problems on the U.S. West Coast. But unfortunately, pollution doesn't just pollute. Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the California Institute of Technology, both in Pasadena, California, are looking at how Asian pollution is changing weather and climate around the globe. Scientists call airborne particles of any sort ? human-produced or natural ? aerosols. The simplest effect of increasing aerosols is to increase clouds. To form clouds, airborne water vapour needs particles on which to condense. With more aerosols, there can be more or thicker clouds. In a warming world, that's good. Sunlight bounces off cloud tops into space without ever reaching Earth's surface, so we stay cooler under cloud cover.

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