Arctic solar geoengineering options modeled – feasibility investigated, including seasonal approach

solar geoengineering ArcticScientists are slowly starting to get practical on geoengineering. Cooling the entire planet with stratospheric solar geoengineering could cost only 5 billion dollars per year. And opting for artificial clouds saving the Arctic with geoengineering could be as cheap as 24 million euros.

Now a group including renowned climatologists and leading geoengineering thinkers Ken Caldeira and David Keith tries to investigate ways to alleviate some of the (likely) unwanted side effects of Arctic solar geoengineering.

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Albedo increase by geoengineering could disrupt global rainfall patterns

A geoengineering solution to climate change could lead to significant rainfall reduction in Europe and North America, a team of European scientists concludes. The researchers studied how models of the Earth in a warm, CO2‑rich world respond to an artificial reduction in the amount of sunlight reaching the planet’s surface. The study is published today in Earth System Dynamics, an Open Access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).

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Painting the skies a bright white with geoengineering

Clouds in the skyOne idea for fighting global warming is to increase the amount of aerosols in the atmosphere, scattering incoming solar energy away from the Earth’s surface. But scientists theorize that this solar geoengineering could have a side effect of whitening the sky during the day. New research from Carnegie’s Ben Kravitz and Ken Caldeira indicates that blocking 2% of the sun’s light would make the sky three-to-five times brighter, as well as whiter. Their work is published June 1st in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

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Brightening rooftops and pavements can cool the Earth by 0.07 degrees

Imagine a world where the rooftops and pavements of every urban area are resurfaced to increase the reflection of the Sun’s light rays. Well, this is exactly what a group of Canadian researchers have simulated in an attempt to measure the potential effects against global warming. Continue reading

Right recipe for CDR geoengineering with biochar: mind the temperature!

Backyard gardeners who make their own charcoal soil additives, or biochar, should take care to heat their charcoal to at least 450 degrees Celsius to ensure that water and nutrients get to their plants, according to a new study by Rice University scientists.

biochar recipe CDR geoengineering

Rice University biogeochemist Caroline Masiello shows improved biochar

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SRM geoengineering more likely to increase global food production

If we would pump aerosols in the stratosphere to artificially cool the Earth and thereby compensate (part of) the current climate warming, we would be permanently living under a slight sunshade. That would mean in a futuristic world it may … Continue reading