Efforts to clean up air pollution in China and across East Asia may have inadvertently contributed to a spike in global warming, a new study has found.

The decline in aerosol emissions — which can cool the planet by absorbing sunlight — have added about 0.05 degrees Celsius in warming per decade since 2010, according to the study, published on Monday in Communications Earth & Environment.

At that time, China began implementing aggressive air quality policies and was ultimately able to achieve a 75 percent reduction in emissions rate of toxic sulfur dioxide, the authors noted.

Sulfur dioxide gas, harmful pollutants that result from fossil fuel combustion and volcanoes, are precursors of sulfate aerosols, which are the dominant aerosol species that cool the Earth today.

Despite posing health threats to plants, humans and other animals, these particles are among the many types of aerosols that also cool the planet.

When clouds form around aerosols, such particles can

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