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.
Here in Seattle we were just one degree above our record low maximum for 17 August.
Since we set a one degree record high max just a few days before that, it’s hard not to speculate about a relationship between the volcanic cloud and temperatures on the West coast.
Can someone offer up evidence to the non-existence of acid rain? And perhaps a better reason as to why the pH and aquatic productivity of lakes in the NE U.S. are so low? I’m skeptical of the claims that human caused acid-rain is baseless.
I thought plenty of SO2 was already produced over the oceans by Dimethyl Sulfide reacting to Ultraviolet rays. This is at low altitudes and is key to low ocean cloud formation (at least according to Dr Svensmark), so I suppose the difference is that this SO2 is injected into the Stratosphere.
The problem of Acid Rain was ludicrously exaggerated in the 1970s and 1980s by environmentalists who wanted to us all to be punished for our materialistic misdeeds. This article http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/sciencetoday/2008/0306/1204675364167.html gives a pretty balanced account, describing Acid Rain as “a nuisance and not a catastophe”. It is not that Acid Rain did not exist or was totally harmless, just that most of the bad things blamed on it were not real and that it was relatively easy to mitigate the few actual problems it caused.
One of the reasons why I am a global warming sceptic is because for the environmentalists AGW is simply too good to be true. After the failure of: the new ice age; DDT causes cancer; GM foods cause cancer; the hole in the ozone layer; acid rain; Malthusian hyper population growth causing starvation; etc it is just too convenient for them to have an even bigger stick to beat us all up with. I am a sceptic because in life I believe that if something seems too good to be true then it is too good to be true – and for the green lobby AGW is simply too good to be true.
In Brazil the left as dominated the educational system for some time now. It is a centralised system and all schools ,public and private, have to teach the same curriculum. Homeschooling is illegal. Geography is now reduced to Global Warming, Environmemtalism and the U.N.. History is Capitalism-bad;Socialism -good. I have had to deprogram my kids all through their school life. Fortunately, it is working as they have no fear in arguing with their teachers, supporting their arguments with facts and figures and this has given them kudos with their fellow students. The trouble is that this has resulted in them having little respect for their teachers and the educational system.
[…] Thanks to Nature, a Large Atmospheric Sulfur Dioxide Experiment is Now Underway in the Pacific Last June, WIRED magazine wrote an in depth article that asked: Can a Million Tons of Sulfur Dioxide Combat Climate […] […]
Patrick Hadley–“if things sound too good to be true…”–on GM foods, it is not that they cause cancer, it is that there is no way to tell what will happen to the “nature” of our food stuffs once GM crops have integrated into non-GM crops. Buddy, practice what you preach—don’t GM foods sound, as you fastened yourself to, “too good to be true”?
JRocha–keep up the good work with your kids.
My personal feeling is that this event will affect the short-term(Fall and maybe Winter). It made it to between 35000 & 50000 ft, but at high latitudes, I don’t think it will last. Tropical region would have been more significant.IMHO
This eruption was pretty rich in SO2, which is pretty significant for a high latitude volcano. Okmok, which erupted a month ago or so, and is nearby, only put out a small amount. The column was as high as Kasatochi I believe. Another good puff could make it a little more significant on the NH climate, along with a quiet Sun.
BTW, what’s with all the SO2 around Antartica? Looks like a buzz saw.
Gaelan Clark: One of my faverite GM foods is golden rice http://www.goldenrice.org
According to the World Health Organization, dietary vitamin A deficiency (VAD) causes some 250,000 to 500,000 children to go blind each year. Blindness and corneal afflictions are but indicators of more severe underlying health problems: more than half the children who lose their sight die within a year of becoming blind. VAD compromises the immune systems of approximately 40 percent of children under the age of five in the developing world, greatly increasing the risk of severe illnesses from common childhood infections.
We have Pinatubo in 1991 producing at least 10 times as much SO2 than the august 2008 outbreak. So the effect of SO2 must be very much smaller than 1991.
Therefore Alarmists can only use this “reason to temporary cooling” so much.
I hope everybody will shoot this new AGW argument down with this as soon as it arises anywhere.
Another thing is: Does the SO2 have an effect? Personnally i think so, from what i read, and if it has some effect it will EVEN FURTHER ACCELERATE THE COOLING.
And even though the AGW peoble can say “Oh its the SO2”, still every layman on the whole globe will experience that its very cold. Definetely not what predicted by the AGW´s
I dont think its so much an advantage for the AGW crew, is it??
– And no i beleive the effect of SO2 is no way near logarithmic like the CO2 effekt: SO2 as i understands it work in a quite different way than CO2.
The SO2 dropletts with wather make an aerosol-like effect (correct?) and this induces a faceshift. A such WILL REFLECT ALL RADIATION. Therefore there is not this saturation effekt of SO2. Double number of molecules means double reflection.¨
Therefore we can say:
“August 2008 effect can only be a fraction of the Pinatubo effect”
randomengineer (10:16:13) :
Years ago the air in Denver was practically unbreathable. One merely had to go up in the hills and look down on the city to see how bad things were.
As a result of enviros working on our car emissions, the air is much improved. One thing for sure: there has been a big drop in lead concentrations of the air.
Of course the auto industry just had a fit. But they cleaned up the emissions.
Back in the 50s, everyone had a little incinerator in the back yard. Once a week everyone burned their trash. Really. People used to do that. No one thought anything of it. So rules were passed and the trash was picked up. There was a lot of yelling and screaming about ‘taxes going up’. But we managed.
I know there was a river back east somewhere that actually caught fire and was listed as a fire hazard by the insurance companies. That was cleaned up.
So they were right on a couple of things.
It really is about cost benefits analysis. And real science as opposed to speculation. Speculation is fun and leads to new hypotheses. But we have test our assumptions and speculations. We start getting into trouble when we think a hypothesis is the truth.
Claims are being made now regarding AGW that just don’t pass muster. Biggest problem they have is the current cooling of the planet. Second biggest problem is the failure to really document any problems caused by AGW. No rising seas. Food production is fine (except where hysteria has triggered conversion of food into fuel).
randomengineer,
You can add CFC’s and ozone destruction to the list of things the alarmists have been wrong about.
Having my 7 year old daughter lecture the family on the need to walk to the grocery store (10 miles away), was one of the reasons we decided to home school. A decision that we never regreted.
Drew,
Research has shown that the reason many NE lakes are acidic is because rainwater flows through so much rotting vegetation before it reaches the lakes.
This is also the reason why acidification was increasing during the 60’s and 70’s. So much of that region was reforesting.
J.Rocha,
Any educational system that places indoctrination above education, does not deserve any respect.
I am afraid that I disagree with this ….. “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.”
Go green, go veg, and pray ….
Some remarks on SO2 emissions and climate…
The Pinatubo eruption injected some 20 million tonnes of SO2 directly into the stratosphere, where it stayed for 2-3 years (to make it convenient, let’s say 800 days). The total effect (including water vapour feedback) was a cooling of maximum 0.6 ºC. Humans emit around 80 million tonnes SO2 per year, mainly in the troposphere where it lasts for average 4 days. The direct effect of both (sunlight scattering on wetted sulphate particles) is virtually the same, which means that the direct effect of human made aerosols is around 0.025 ºC (including a 4-day accumulation). Tropospheric aerosols also are supposed to have an indirect effect on clouds (more reflective, longer lasting). The IPCC gives a fourfold range increase for this forcing, compared to the direct effect. If we assume this is right, then the net effect of human made SO2 emissions would be 0.1 ºC.
But the cooling effect of aerosols incorporated in current models is much larger. The Hadcm3 model has made a retrofit of the influence of aerosol changes in the period 1990-1999 (thanks, William), where there should be an increase of 6 ºC at the place of largest aerosol influence in Europe. That is not visible at all in the surface station data.
The Indoex experiment in the Indian Ocean showed a large difference in radiation balance between the NH and the SH near the equator. The NH with a large load of aerosols has a top-of-atmosphere loss of 5 W/m2, and the surface has app. 20 W/m2 less insolation. Despite that, the temperature trends on the South tip of India are more positive than for the only SH climate station (Diego Garcia) in the neighbourhood. Not only land is warming faster in that region, the heat content if the NH Indian Ocean increased slightly more than the SH, if corrected for area (as surrogate for volume).
The overall temperature trend for land increased more for the NH than for the SH. Moreover, the heat content of the oceans increased more in the NH than in the SH (again, if corrected for area), while 90% of the aerosols are emitted and have their effect in the NH.
Thus it seems to me that either the influence of sulphate aerosols is overestimated, or the influence of soot aerosols underestimated (or both) in current models. Either way, that means that the influence of a CO2 doubling will be on the low side of the IPCC estimates and probably below.
Of course this is not an exact calculation and it doesn’t include a lot of other items which influence temperature trends. But it would be interesting to compare the modelled regional influence of large changes in aerosols with regional temperature trends and to compare the hemispheric differences in ocean heat content increase with hemispheric aerosol influences on energy balances.
Just another addle-brained half-baked idea from another ‘expert’
[…] me to redirect you to this post from a fellow wordpress site, and after the jump we will all be sulfur dioxide specialists. And […]
The International Geological Congress, dubbed the geologists’ equivalent of the Olympic Games, was held in Oslo, Norway, from August 4-14.
some might be interested in veiwing this
http://33igc.org/coco/EntryPage.aspx?guid=1&PageID=5100&ContainerID=11823&ObjectID=12520
Anthony:
While I applaud your headlining ability to flush out those who don’t actually *critically* read the actual article, I was not referring to the debate over volcanoes’ *ability* to produce cooling effect, nor even to a debate over whether we should try… I was referring to:
(from you): “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”
(from McGrats): “Bingo! That’s exactly what will happen and NASA’a already begun the drum-beats!” [didn’t see a cite, I would be interested if there is one]
(from Frank L:) “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?” [to Frank’s credit, he does say “if”]
(from dreamin): “I agree that a big enough volcano will be used as an excuse (if necessary) by alarmists.”
(from Alan Chapelle): “The biggest problem in the AGW debate is that the ‘Alarmists’ are as changeable as the weather.” [not sure what that means exactly, but it seems to be a kind of reply to the hypothetical scenario that alarmists will blame volcanoes for creating hypothetical cooling]
(from Matt): “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).”
(from kim): “Leif, not a big enough effect to take the minimizing sun off the hook. But it will be blamed for the survival of the Baby Ice.”
I am a skeptic, of both sides. When I read the AGW *scientists*, I see hypotheses that we very well may be heading for real trouble… they are by no means certain enough to make any predictions – but they’ve seen that the probabilities of a trend are high enough, and the consequences harmful enough, that they feel the need to report on it now, even while they are working on learning more.
Yes, it’s true that many alarmists have overstated the reports of the scientists, and often mischaracterize (or at the very least misunderstand) the scientific position; I mostly ignore them, and just look at the data, and the scientists’ opinions, themselves.
However, on the extremist skeptic side, I see mostly attack by derision and negating of straw-man arguments, often by attributing claims and positions to the opponent, not based on anything actually said but what the attacker thinks they *will say*, or “obviously” think (i.e., mindreading). To me, that is a red flag, that the person is more interested in inventing an argument rather than debating a position actually held.
As a skeptic of both sides, I would join you in decrying the use of extremist or alarmist positions or arguments by either side; however from the quote above it seems that you, and several of your readers, have decided that ‘debate by mindreading’ is acceptable.
To me, it is not, and only adds to the noise, no matter which side does it.
Jack Simmons–
I always enjoy your reasonable and well thought out comments.
Regarding this:
That was the Cuyahoga river in Cleveland, Ohio. And you’re right, People fish there all the time now. The EPA says the fish are fine to eat.
The U.S. is now one of the very cleanest countries on Earth — if not the cleanest. The Ganges river in India is terribly filthy and hazardous. China had to shut down their entire industry in and around Beijing during the Olympics to pretend they aren’t gross, filthy polluters with zero regard for the environment or the atmosphere. Ever been across the border to Mexico?
Almost exclusively, America, now the cleanest country on the planet, gets attacked incessantly by the green lobby 24/7/365. Now we’re supposed to feel guilty about extremely minor issues like plastic grocery bags, of all things. [The real reason for that is because they occasionally cause jamming in the automated trash separating machinery, so the recyclers have to hire more expensive human pickers. Bad for the bottom line. Solution: a few bucks in the right pockets, and the drumbeat starts… Grocery bags, ba-aa-ad. Carry your own burlap sacks around, goo-oo-ood]
See how it works?
Interesting. Almost sounds like terraforming the Earth but it’d be a lot easier and cheaper if we’d just stop dumping stuff into the atmosphere to stop global warming at the source.
Ferdinand Englebeen: Do you have references for the OHC statements you make about the overall NH and SH? If so, please provide links. I’d like to read them. Thanks.