According to scientists at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, if we want to try to stop the melting of the arctic shelf and surrounding areas cities and industries to the far south will need to reduce their short lived pollutants.

Scientist have already discovered that pollutants such as carbon dioxide can increase Arctic temperatures by as much as three degrees Celsius, but preliminary data is now suggesting that pollutants coming from the far south have the same effect. Since these pollutants tend to be seasonal and have a faster rate of dissipation, the reduction of these admissions would be much easier than tackling greenhouse gases.

The urban pollutants being discussed are hydrocarbons include nitrogen oxides from cars and other vehicles, sulfates and soot from industry. According to Patricia Quinn, who is an atmospheric chemist at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, the effects of these pollutants, while bad in urban centers, are extremely potent in the Arctic.

“There’s a huge temperature inversion in the Arctic during the winter. You don’t get much vertical mixing, and you don’t get much precipitation, so stuff that gets in there just sits. It can be in there for weeks.”

When spring, and the sun, finally return to the Arctic, things are only exacerbated. “You have all the precursors sitting there, and then when the sun comes up, you have all these ingredients for ozone,” Quinn explained. “And because it’s dark, you can get ozone transported up there without it being destroyed.”

This latest finding brings some hope to the problem of Arctic ice melting and the global environmental issues that would result.

“At least it gives us something that we have a chance to mitigate,” Quinn said, “as opposed to something like [CO₂], which has a much longer time scale given the rapid changes in the Arctic.”