Last June, WIRED magazine wrote an in depth article that asked:
Can a Million Tons of Sulfur Dioxide Combat Climate Change?
The question arose from research from research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory near San Francisco, by Lowell Wood, a protégé of the brilliant and controversial hydrogen bomb inventor Edward Teller. The idea was simple: Inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere to reflect a portion of the sun’s rays back into space, thus cooling the planet. It also seemed to be within the realm of possibility to some.
Here is how it works:
Graphic and text below adapted from Wired magazine article
1. Make sulfur dioxide
A million tons of sulfur dioxide would be needed to begin the cooling process. Luckily SO2, a byproduct of coal-burning power plants, is a common industrial chemical.
2. Inject it into the stratosphere
Load the sulfur dioxide into aircraft — converted 747s, military fighters, or even large balloons — and carry it up to the stratosphere. This will cost about $1 billion a year.
3. Wait for the chemical reaction
In a series of reactions, sulfur dioxide combines with other molecules in the atmosphere, ultimately forming sulfuric acid. This H2SO4 binds to water to form aerosol droplets that absorb and reflect back into space 1 to 3 percent of the sun’s rays. (The particles also contribute to the depletion of the ozone layer, but scientists are researching alternate chemicals.)
4. Let the planet cool
Results will be quick, especially over the Arctic.
And just a few days ago, over a million tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2) was in fact injected into the atmosphere over the Pacific Ocean, here is a satellite sounder derived image of the cloud that has been released:
Source: AVO
The Terra/MODIS satellite snapped a nice image of the release, notice the obvious brown trail as the plume becomes airborne over the Pacific ocean:
Source: NASA
Here is a photo of where the experiment took place:
The Kasatochi volcano as seen from space, and location map below:
Thanks to a posting on another wordpress blog called “eruptions” we have this insight from Dr. Simon Carn from the University of Maryland in Baltimore:
“The August 7-8 eruption of Kasatochi volcano (Aleutian Islands)produced a very large stratospheric SO2 cloud – possibly the largest since the August 1991 eruption of Hudson (Chile). Preliminary SO2 mass calculations using Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) data suggest a total SO2 burden of ~1.5 Tg. This figure will be revised in the coming weeks but is more likely to go up than down. The SO2 cloud has drifted over a large area of North America and is now (August 14) reaching Europe.“
With the released SO2 at ~ 1.5 Tg (Teragrams, a unit of mass approximately equal to one megaton) this is actually 50% more than mass in the experiment proposed by Wood and Teller.
For those wishing to follow the plume, NOAA offers a website that tracks SO2 in the atmosphere here. You can also keep tabs on the eruption and plume at the Alaska Volcano Observatory.
With this eruption coming on the heels of a short term global cooling trend that we’ve seen in the last 18 months, it will be interesting to see if this real-world experiment being performed by nature will add to the trend we’ve already seen.
Click for a larger image
Reference: UAH lower troposphere data
This type of “experiment” has already been seen before in recent times, as the Wired article mentions:
Pinatubo’s eruption didn’t just unleash huge mud slides and lava flows; it also fired an ash stream 22 miles into the air, injecting 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. Over the following months, a massive haze gradually dispersed across the globe. Meanwhile, the sulfur dioxide component underwent chemical reactions to form a particulate known as sulfate aerosol (in essence, droplets of water and sulfuric acid), which absorbs sunlight and reflects some of it back into space.
The climatic effect of this volcanic eruption was rapid, dramatic, and planetary in scale. In a year, the global average temperature declined by half a degree Celsius, and researchers observed less summer melt atop the Greenland ice sheet.
An interesting passage in the article on SO2 injection suggests:
Until large-scale experiments are funded, the only way to explore the potential consequences is through computer simulations. By turning down the virtual sun or cranking up the digital carbon, we can create any planetary future we want.
It looks like nature has stepped up and eliminated that need for computer simulation.
Based on Carn’s estimate, when the data is all in on Kasatochi, it will likely be about 10 times less than Pinatubo in total mass of SO2 ejected. But we’ll watch, measure, and see what this smaller event does for our global climate. Unfortunately, most any global cooling we see in the next couple of years, no matter what the true cause of it is, will probably be labeled as “volcanically induced” due to this event.
h/t to Philip_B for comments that lead to this article’s creation
UPDATE: 8/19/08 10:20 AM PST There has some been some questions in comments as to whether or not the plume reached stratospheric levels. This press release from USGS notes that the plume has reached more than 35,000 feet altitude, which would put the plume into the lower stratosphere.
Yes, at the first glance of this article i feared that tha alarmist now has yet another excuse for the lower temperatures.
Terrible.
The La Nina levelled off around May, but the temperatures are still much lower than last year. And now a little late, something happends that they can use as explanation.
But still, we appear to be in for a very cold period, and never mind what, if the alarmists uses this event as explanation, they contradict earlier statements that CO2 effect is much much larger than the sun and volcanos, dont they?
Suddently alarmists would have to admit that a rising CO2 level has very little effect compared to natrual events? So maybe they have to think a little before using this event?
Anthony: Would a high latitude volcanic eruption induce a positive or negative AO? I would think there would be some influence, but which way? Low latitude volcanoes create a positive as noted in the quote that follows from the IPCC’s AR4.
Caleb: There is a short Arctic warming during winter months that shows up a couple of years after a volcanic eruption in the tropics.
Reference:“Volcanic Eruptions and Climate” by Alan Robock
Quote: “After the 1982 El Chichon and 1991 Pinatubo eruptions the tropical bands (30S–30N) warmed more than the 30N–90N band…producing an enhanced pole-to-equator temperature gradient. The resulting stronger polar vortex produces the tropospheric winter warming…”
Also, in Chapter 2 of AR4, (page 195), the IPCC describes this winter warming further: “Anomalies in the volcanic-aerosol induced global radiative heating distribution can force significant changes in atmospheric circulation, for example, perturbing the equator-to-pole heating gradient…and forcing a positive phase of the Arctic Oscillation that in turn causes a counterintuitive boreal winter warming at middle and high latitudes over Eurasia and North America…”
I haven’t found anything that says it happens after a high-latitude eruption.
If the estimate that this volcano will be ten times less than Pinatubo in SO2 emissions is correct, then surely it is likely to have a relatively small influence on global temperatures: or is the SO2 effect logarithmic with the first 10% added having the greatest effect?
“But we’ll watch, measure, and see what this smaller event does for our global climate.”
Yes, and then we’ll compare the earth’s temperature against the control earth I have in my pocket…. 😉 Seriously, how will we know exactly what this event did, if we don’t know how things would have looked without it? Same goes for CO2 of course…..
I agree that a big enough volcano will be used as an excuse (if necessary) by alarmists. Indeed, I asked an alarmist the other day exactly what caused the Little Ice Age and he asserted confidently that it was caused by volcanos.
The thing is, volcanos are part of the environment too. By all appearances, the world has a few major volcanos every century. If the alarmists’ predictions (on the time scale of 50 to 100 years) are made on the assumption that there will be no volcanos, then those predictions are worthless.
Are these AGW people completely bonkers? Has the belief in their hypothesis become so distorted that they’d risk utterly reckless atmospheric experiments simply to avoid the perceived ignominy of being disproved? This is just further evidence that AGW is slowly leaning more towards fundamentalist belief and further away from science: true scientists welcome contrary research as the means by which their hypotheses can be either refuted, improved or accepted. Let’s hope none of these hair-brained schemes make it beyond the drawing board.
Here’s another idea: I read yesterday that it’s estimated that termites produce more C02 than human emissions. So let’s slaughter those damned termites (keeping some specimens to restore the colonies once it’s proved that C02 actually had very little to do with climate variation). At least we’ll have a few precious years without our houses being eaten!……and let’s not even get into the Wetlands, those filthy pits of carbon pollution!……(Only joking).
bit late to blame the cold on this eruption NZ today has recorded the the biggest snow base in the history of commercial skiing in New Zealand. The snow stake at 2000m above sea level officially measures 455cm’s this morning. We are now wondering where it might all end up. Whakapapa is also entering record territory at 350cm’s, which is the most since 1994. Ok enough is enough, just blue skies now please.
http://www.mtruapehu.com/winter/latest-news/
also more snow on the way
charts and pics of the snow here (scroll down);
http://forums.ski.com.au/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=483512&page=1&fpart=2
another freezing blast hitting Australia now
Frank L/Denmark
The biggest problem in the AGW debate is that the ‘Alarmists’ are as changeable as the weather.
Wow, I am sure this is going to work. This is just like Hansen predicting warming when we are in the interglacial warming cycle. It really isnt a stretch to get cooling during a cooling cycle of a solar/sunspot minimum.
Ok, let me get this straight….all of this SO2 into the atmosphere, and we get a 1-3% reduction in incoming solar radiation, thereby reducing global temps??—–But, the sun has no effect on temps??(Ahem, or so says RC and the Team.)
And, with a ~10 year downslope on global temps, I am really inteested in learning the “NEW” argument that global cooling preceeded the actual SO2 in the atmosphere.—This is tons of fun, and so confusing my head is still spinning.
Don’t worry. These schemes for “curing” global warming (seeding the oceans/atmosphere) will never have the support of environmentalists because they do nothing to reduce man to pre-industrial living conditions.
Mea Culpa: I did in fact only skim the Wired article, I was getting ready for work. Apologies.
John D. , do a search for ‘Humanist Manifesto’. Version I was written in the ’30s, and Version III was in the early 70s, IIRC. Very enlightening, esp with regards to the education system and politicians.
Well, good timing! The cover story for the next Science News has a photo of the Mt St Helens explosion and the headline “Global Cooling.” The story is actually about a Peruvian volcano that erupted in 1600 which may have led to a three year stretch of crop failures in Russia. One third of the population died in the ensuing famine. See
http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/35245/title/Disaster_Goes_Global
The article is largely written for people who haven’t learned that “It’s not the ash, it’s the SO2” and reports that most of the SO2 came from liquid (dirty water, I assume) and not rocks.
The most useful information may be
That may be pessimistic. Transportation will help. I’ve long claimed that a very good conservation practice would be “First, we eat all the beef.” And, in light of recent events, Russia seems to have more options than it did in the early 1600s.
Sigh. I really didn’t want a damn “stratospheric injection event” until more people figured out that it’s not the CO2 behind recent warming.
Changing the earth’s reflectivity may be a good way to regulate its temperature. But hopefully there is a better way to do it than dumping tons of SO2 into the atmosphere. That’s some pretty nasty stuff.
BTW How does this work? That brown cloud looks like it would absorb sunlight rather than reflect it.
REPLY: Part of the cloud is ash.
Mr B (22:09:31) :
“Anyone remember the shrieking over acid rain? How is this different/better?”
The key word is stratosphere. If you look at the temperature profile at
http://www.windows.ucar.edu/tour/link=/earth/Atmosphere/layers.html (be sure to click on the image to see the annotated version), the temperature rises through the stratosphere. This makes it very hard for moist air from the Earth’s surface to reach the stratosphere and wash out the SO2.
Acid rain develops in the troposphere and washes out in only days or weeks. SO2 in the stratosphere remains for years and turns into an aerosol that reflects sunlight and produces a couple years of cooling. Eventually it does settle out and normal temperatures return.
This eruption may be much more significant than the volcano in Chile a few months ago.
How dare the volcano do this without filing an Environmental Impact Statement?!? Call out the lawyers!
Slightly more seroiusly, if SO2 is common, resulting from coal combustion, what of the 1.3GT of coal burned each year in China? Does the smoke not get high enough to create the same effect? LASDE in progress?
Global Warming, Global Cooling, Climate Change, Acid Rain, Peak Oil.. I’m gonna need a bigger score card to keep track of all these pending disasters.
One saving grace is suggested from this article on the Chilean volcane (Chaiten), see
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=18040
Kasatochi may be a little closer to the pole than Chaiten.
Anthony wrote: “REPLY: No, but it does mean that most any cooling we see in the next couple of years, no matter what the true cause of it, will be labeled automatically as “volcanic induced”. – Anthony”
Bingo! That’s exactly what will happen and NASA’a already begun the drum-beats!
Jack Koenig, Editor
The Mysterious Climate Project
http://www.climateclinic.com
Will this have a immediate (within days) effect on temperature in the Northern Hemisphere? or a slow effect (months/years)
..and if so how much ..
because if this summer is getting even worse, im driving to the mediteranian.
One of the signatures of a big enough volcanic event to impact global climate is warming in the stratosphere. The three big ones in the last 50 years all left this signal.
So far, however, there is no change in stratospheric temps according to UAH’s daily sat temp measures in the upper atmosphere. Maybe too early. Maybe not big enough.
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/execute.csh?amsutemps+009
REPLY: Too early, dispersal and chemical change have yet to occur.
Patrick Henry (22:06:02) :
REPLY: No, but it does mean that most any cooling we see in the next couple of years, no matter what the true cause of it, will be labeled automatically as “volcanic induced”. – Anthony
Takes the Sun and its minimum off the hook for now…
Why don’t they leave Nature alone? Mankind is only part of Mother Earth for a minute part and they already want to change it.
As I mentioned before why don’t accept Climate as it is and get on with your life and spend money to the 3rd world instead of crazy experiments which only purpose is to keep all them climatologists at work fer crissakes…
RE:
“Unfortunately, most any global cooling we see in the next couple of years, no matter what the true cause of it is, will probably be labeled as “volcanically induced” due to this event.”
Of course, down the road, they’ll rewrite the history to make the last 12 month’s cooling “volcanically induced”, just like the CO2-induced warming of the 20th century (for which at least half the warming occurred before the big rise in CO2).