gradual reduction in the amount of global direct irradiance at the Earth's surface; approx. 4% reduction over 1960–1990; caused by an increase in atmospheric particulates (e.g. sulfate aerosols) due to human action
Hotspots of sulfate aerosol pollution in 2005–2007 are highlighted in orange. Such sulfates rarely occur naturally outside of volcanic activity, and their increased levels are the main cause of global dimming.
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Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).