SO2 cooling and detection of the greenhouse effect

Summary Greenhouse effect calculations normally take into account the greenhouse gases’s (CO₂ mainly) warming effect. Only recently the inclusion of the cooling effect due to different gases (SO₂ mainly) has been suggested. Zecca and Brusa have proposed that the historical evolution of SO₂ production might have caused the apparent global cooling in the period 1940–1970 and might still now hinder the detection of greenhouse warming. In this paper it is shown that the SO₂ hypothesis could lead to a definite detection of the greenhouse warming provided that the globally averaged minimum daily and maximum daily temperatures were studied.