From the journal Atmospheric Science Letters press release:
Could Dimming the Sun Change Teleconnections in Weather Patterns as we Know Them?
Solar radiation management projects, also known as sun dimming, seek to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth to counteract the effects of climate change. Global dimming can occur as a side-effect of fossil fuels or as a result of volcanic eruptions, but the consequences of deliberate sun dimming as a geoengineering tool are unknown.
A new study by Dr Peter Braesicke, from the Centre for Atmospheric Science at Cambridge University, seeks to answer this question by focusing on the possible impacts of a dimming sun on atmospheric teleconnections.
Teleconnections, important for the predictability of weather regimes, are the phenomenon of distant climate anomalies being related to each other at large distances, such as the link between sea-level pressure at Tahiti and Darwin, Australia, which defines the Southern Oscillation.
“It is important that we look for unintended consequences of any sun dimming schemes,” said Braesicke. “We have to test our models continuously against observations to make sure that they are ‘fit-for-purpose’, and it’s important that we should not only look at highly averaged ‘global’ quantities.”
Dr Braesicke’s team believes that the link between tropical temperatures and extra-tropical circulation are well captured for the recent past and that the link changes when the sun is dimmed.
“This could have consequences for prevailing weather regimes,” said Braesicke, “particularly for the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) teleconnection. Our research allows us to assess how forced atmospheric variability, exemplified by the northern polar region, might change in a geoengineered world with a dimmed sun.”
A dimmed sun will change the temperature structure of the atmosphere with a cooling throughout the atmosphere. In the troposphere, temperatures drop because less solar radiation reaches the ground and therefore less can be converted into heat. In the stratosphere, less shortwave radiation is available for absorption by ozone and, therefore, heating rates in the stratosphere are lower.
“We have shown that important teleconnections are likely to change in such a geoengineered future, due to chemistry-climate interactions and in particular, due to changing stratospheric ozone,” concluded Braesicke. “In our model, the forced variability of northern high latitude temperatures changes spatially, from a polecentred pattern to a pattern over the Pacific region when the solar irradiance is reduced. Future geoengineering studies need to consider the full evolution of the stratosphere, including its chemical behaviour.”
The Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project
In an accompanying paper Ben Kravitz, from Rutgers University, reviews the new project to coordinate and compare experiments in aerosol geoengineering and evaluates the effects of stratospheric geoengineering with sulfate aerosols.
Since the idea of geoengineering was thrust back into the scientific arena many have wondered whether it could reduce global warming as a mitigation measure. Kravitz’s team argues that one of the most feasible methods is through stratospheric sulfate aerosols. While geoengineering projects are not yet favored by policy makers this method is inexpensive compared with other such projects and so may prove more attractive.
However, stratospheric geoengineering with sulfate aerosols may have unintended consequences. Research indicates that stratospheric geoengineering could, by compensating for increased greenhouse gas concentrations, reduce summer monsoon rainfall in Asia and Africa, potentially threatening the food supply for billions of people.
“Some unanswered questions include whether a continuous stratospheric aerosol cloud would have the same effect as a transient one, such as that from a volcano, and to what extent regional changes in precipitation would be compensated by regional changes in evapotranspiration,” said Kravitz.
A consensus has yet to be reached on these, as well as other, important issues and to answer these questions the team propose a suite of standardised climate modeling experiments, as well as a coordinating framework for performing such experiments, known as the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP).
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Dim Sun – yum!
Solar radiation management projects, also known as sun dimming, seek to reduce the amount of sunlight hitting the Earth to counteract the effects of climate change.
So when it’s manmade it’s “climate change,” but when it’s the sun it’s termed as “counteracting” climate change. We’re meant to take seriously the words of a “scientist” who doesn’t even recognise the existence of natural climate change?
Actually, ignore my last comment. I really should read things properly before posting. D’oh.
I have seven beautiful grandchildren.
It’s fascinating to watch them grow.
They all go through the stage of experimenting when nobody is watching;
without any understanding of the disasterous disruption to family life, that this can and far too often, does cause.
It’s good they have fond parents who can clean up the mess afterwards.
Who will clean up after the climatololololologists?
Dim sum? Yum cha?
Like most here, I think it’s high time we cut these kook’s budgets immediately! People talk about state and federal budget crises, but then spend millions of tax payer dollars on “geo-engineering” crud like this. As long as this kind of reckless spending persists, please don’t let anyone tell you we need more money for “science” and “education”!
Blah, blah, blah, as if. What a hoax to get more money, and if they truly believe they can block the sun then they must believe Earth is the size of a basketball as many do due to being able to fly from New York to San Francisco in a matter of hours-screws up your perception of the size of our planet and how fragile it is, Not!
If such schemes ever came to fruition, they would be extraordinarily dangerous and short-sighted. The simplest way to stop such folly is to cut off its funding. In the USA, the Congress can direct NASA, the NSF, and other agencies to stop underwriting grants for geo-engineering projects. Presumably public monies are similarly funding this nonsense in the UK as well. Write your congressman, or member of parliament.
Of course, you will get accused of suppressing scientific research, but there is nothing to stop any determined ‘climate change’ zealot from continuing on his own hook. How many would, though, if the government gravy train dried up?
/Mr Lynn
Apart from all the criticisms already raised, by what authority do they intend to dim the sun? I presume they imagine some kind of debate in the UN, where after several months (or more likely years) of reasoned debate, they reach a consensus to lower the planet’s temperature.
Even if such a consensus was ever reached (unlikely, considering that high latitude countries would be vehemently against it), there then has to be the agreement of national parliaments. Ok, the EU is mad enough to issue such a directive to member states, but I would expect most parliaments to rebel. But even if parliaments are brainwashed enough to go along with this scheme, it would meet fierce opposition from the people of those nations. There would be a veritable uprising, angry mobs rampaging through the streets. Sounds like a complete non starter to me.
“Teleconnections, important for the predictability of weather regimes, are the phenomenon of distant climate anomalies being related to each other at large distances, such as the link between sea-level pressure at Tahiti and Darwin, Australia, which defines the Southern Oscillation.”
Anyone that sees the winds that are result of pressure differentials in the atmosphere as ‘teleconnection’ should not be allowed near anything sharp. This man obviously has no understanding of the working of the climate systems.
If this guy can get funding for a “study” like this, then I should be able to get funding for my study: If we genetically alter frogs to fly, will they still bump their ass when they hop?
>>Vuk
>>SC24 max approaching ? Polar fields waste no time.
>>http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC6.htm
Vuk. If you don’t explain how your wiggly lines were derived, and what they mean, you will forever be relgated to the sidelines of climatic research.
.
Perhaps there needs to be a mandatory refresher course in chaotic systems followed by a test people must absolutely pass before they’re allowed to buy food (just to make it compelling).
It’s not enough we’ve created GM crops that are now in the wild, we wish to fiddle with a primary influence in our environment at a time when we have nothing but a strong belief bordering on religion about that we would irrevocably alter.
The genie has left the bottle.
These types of people should be locked up and fed only bread and water. They are extremely dangerous.
There is nothing particularly clever about it, all well known constants of astronomy, only thing I did is to put them together in:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/LFC6.htm
-11.862 years = Jupiter sidereal period
-19.859 years = Jupiter- Saturn synodic period
-1940.5 year = a phase reference point for start of J-S synodic at the ‘nose’ of heliosphere
– 3 years = average rise time (steepest part) of a sunspot cycle coincides with the rapid magnetic decline in the strength of polar fields.
“Global dimming can occur as a side-effect of fossil fuels or as a result of volcanic eruptions, but the consequences of deliberate sun dimming as a geoengineering tool are unknown.”
There were 3 recent VEI 6 eruptions that were followed by warming for 2 years from the events: 1883, 1902, 1912, so it would be safer to sit back and watch a few more volcanoes before jumping to conclusions about the effects.
http://www.volcano.si.edu/world/largeeruptions.cfm
Yes, let’s fit our planet with a giant pair of sunglasses. If we can successfully pull that off, then we will be in a position to build a stairway to Heaven.
Perhaps we should replace the sun with a giant CFL. But most of those aren’t dimmable.
To remind those who might have heard about this –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Znamya_(space_mirror)
Basically the Russians were looking for MORE light for their country and were playing with space mirrors. Prompting the question for both camps… Should we really be adding or taking way solar inputs?
Until someone can show–IN DETAIL–how ice ages come about (not just the general attributions to Milankovich cycles and “hey dude, it snows and doesn’t melt”) and how they end, any effort to globally geo-engineer climate is a mad gamble.
By ‘in detail’, I mean an explicit reconstruction (incl. precipitation source, rate of accumulation/compaction, and rate of advance) of the mechanisms for the growth of ice in the arctic regions to such a degree that it ‘pours’ south (meaning continued accumulation hundreds of miles north of the leading edge of the glacier). An exhaustive web search comes up with a scarcity of ‘theories for continental glaciation’ or ’causes of ice ages’. Most of what’s available is a collection of unexplainable assumptions.
Without understanding the above, why mess with any of the rest?
I can just imagine if this scheme ever goes ahead, I won’t be the only one running solar electricity who will be suing for compensation.
The visual spectrum is a miniscule part of the entire spectrum . . . Dimming is relative.
“The visible spectrum is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to (can be detected by) the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation in this range of wavelengths is called visible light or simply light. A typical human eye will respond to wavelengths from about 390 to 750 nm”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visible_spectrum
Wiki – it changes
“Kravitz’s team argues that one of the most feasible methods is through stratospheric sulfate aerosols. While geoengineering projects are not yet favored by policy makers this method is inexpensive compared with other such projects and so may prove more attractive.
“Kravitz’s team argues that one of the most feasible methods is through stratospheric sulfate aerosols. While geoengineering projects are not yet favored by policy makers this method is inexpensive compared with other such projects and so may prove more attractive.”
Please check the following to get a base number.
Mt Pinatubo “SYNERUPTION SULFUR DIOXIDE OUTPUT (June 7, 1991 – September 7, 1991)
The Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS), carried in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA’s) Nimbus-7 satellite, measured 110,000 t of SO2 in the June 12, 1991, eruption plume, and 20,000,000 t on June 15-16 (Bluth and others, 1992). Clearly, the amounts of SO2 released during the main explosive events were several orders of magnitude greater than emission before or after the main explosive events.” http://pubs.usgs.gov/pinatubo/daag1/index.html
So over 20,110,000 tons of SO2 were released to get a 2 year blip on world temperatures. What is the cost of pumping 10,000,000 tons of SO2 into the air every year?
Isn’t it nice to know that you can make a living pondering stupid projects which are:
(1) Un-necessary as we are not warming and also not warming in a continuing manner, which such projects would suggest. To assume that temperatures would go up for the foreseeable future means ignorance of our own history.
(2) Ridiculously impossible to implement.
(3) Ridiculously expensive.
(4) Rank with unforeseeable consequences, as they really have no idea waht they are doing. I saw no inclusion of the convectional heat engine in any of this discussion. There is a great chance that dimming the Sun would have little effect as it would serve to turn down convectional cooling and cause a retention of heat.