Phys.org August 23, 2022 Making informed future decisions about solar radiation modification (SRM)/solar geoengineering requires projections of the climate response and associated human and ecosystem impacts using climate models and simulations. SRM modeling simulations to date typically consider only a single scenario, often with some unrealistic or arbitrarily chosen elements (such as starting deployment in 2020) and have often been chosen based on scientific rather than policy-relevant considerations. An international team of researchers (USA – Cornell University, Indiana University, NCAR, Duke University, American University, UCLA, Japan) list several scenarios that explore different choices, and present new climate model simulation results. […]
Tag Archives: Solar geoengineering
Geoengineering could return risk of malaria for one billion people
Phys. org April 20, 2022 Solar geoengineering is often framed as a stopgap measure to decrease the magnitude, impacts, and injustice of climate change. However, the benefits or costs of geoengineering for human health are largely unknown. An international team of researchers (USA – Georgetown University, University of Maryland, Rutgers University, University of Florida, Bangladesh, Germany, South Africa) has projected how geoengineering could impact malaria risk by comparing current transmission suitability and populations-at-risk under moderate and high greenhouse gas emissions scenarios with and without geoengineering. They showed that if geoengineering deployment cools the tropics, it could help protect high elevation […]
‘Sky is not the limit’ for solar geoengineering
Science Daily March 14, 2022 In a report a team of researchers in the US (Yale College Harvard University, AIAA, industry) responded to a question posed by the US National Academy of Science, Engineering, and Medicine in a landmark study in March 2021 which recognized the need for additional research on the viability of depositing aerosols well above 20 km to deflect incoming sunlight and countervail global warming. According to the team airliners and military jets routinely cruise near 10 km, whereas 20 km is the realm of high-flying spy planes and drones. Planning to fly hundreds of thousands of […]
Dimming The Sun Is a Dangerous Gamble And Should Be Banned, Scientists Warn
Science Alert January 18, 2022 In an open letter more than 60 policy experts and scientists warned that planetary-scale engineering schemes designed to cool Earth’s surface and lessen the impact of global heating are potentially dangerous and should be blocked by governments. According to the signatories there are several reasons to reject such a course of action – artificially dimming the Sun’s radiative force is likely to disrupt monsoon rains in South Asia and western Africa, ravage the rain-fed crops upon which hundreds of millions depend for nourishment, if SRM were terminated for any reason, there is high confidence that surface […]
In Science magazine, scholars call for more comprehensive research into solar geoengineering
Phys.org November 11, 2021 As the prospect of average global warming exceeding 1.5°C becomes increasingly likely, interest in supplementing mitigation and adaptation with solar geoengineering (SG) responses will almost certainly rise. For example, stratospheric aerosol injection to cool the planet could offset some of the warming for a given accumulation of atmospheric greenhouse gases. However, the physical and social science literature on SG remains modest compared with mitigation and adaptation. An international team of researchers (USA – Harvard university, Duke University, research organization, American University, Georgia State University, UC San Diego, Yale University, NCAR, Duke University, Italy, India, Switzerland, Germany, […]
Can solar geoengineering mitigate both climate change and income inequality?
Science Daily January 13, 2020 An international team of researchers (University of California, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of California, Cornell University, Switzerland, Canada) applied macroeconomic impact models and combined historical evidence with climate simulations of mean annual temperature and precipitation. They found that the impacts of climate changes on global GDP-per-capita by the end of the century are temperature-driven, highly dispersed, and model dependent. Across all model specifications, however, income inequality between countries is lower with solar geoengineering. They found that precipitation has little to no effect on GDP growth in our results, but there is a relationship for […]
Finding the right ‘dose’ for solar geoengineering
Science Daily March 11, 2019 Applying huge doses of solar geoengineering to offset all warming from rising atmospheric C02 levels could worsen the climate problem — particularly rainfall patterns — in certain regions. However, through modeling, a team of researchers in the US (Harvard University, MIT, Princeton University Georgia Institute of Technology) found that if solar geoengineering (SG) is used to cut global temperature increases in half, no IPCC-defined region is made worse off in any of the major climate impact indicators. Climate models suggest that geoengineering could enable surprisingly uniform benefits. The model indicates that SG moderates changes in […]