Beijing smog, Kansas City heat wave

A new report finds that pollution from Asia may be causing higher summer temperatures in North America:

In addition to soot, smog and sulfates, other short-lived pollutants are organic carbon, dust and nitrates. While carbon dioxide is invisible, these are pollutants people can see.

Projected increases in some of these pollutants and decreases in others in Asia will eventually add up to about 20 percent of the already-predicted man-made summer warming in America by 2060, the report said.

"What they do about their pollution can affect our climate," said study co-author Hiram "Chip" Levy, a senior scientist at NOAA's fluid dynamics lab in Princeton, New Jersey.

This pollution will likely create three "hot spots" in the world: the central United States, Europe around the Mediterranean Sea, and Kazakhstan, which borders Russia and China. In the United States it's "a big blob in the middle of the country" stretching from the Rocky Mountains to the Appalachians, Levy said.

The same analysis also shows about an inch less of yearly rain in middle America because of Asian emissions by about 2060.

We need solutions for climate change... and the Republicans have proven incapable of offering them. I'm fed up with eight years of inaction... it's time for a new direction.