From the University of Washington some apparent confusion about what sulfates look like.
Injecting sulfate particles into stratosphere won’t fully offset climate change
IMAGE:A polar bear walks along an expanse of open water at the edge of Hudson Bay near Churchill, Manitoba, in 2011. The bears need pack ice to hunt for…Click here for more information.
As the reality and the impact of climate warming have become clearer in the last decade, researchers have looked for possible engineering solutions – such as removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or directing the sun’s heat away from Earth – to help offset rising temperatures.
New University of Washington research demonstrates that one suggested method, injecting sulfate particles into the stratosphere, would likely achieve only part of the desired effect, and could carry serious, if unintended, consequences.
The lower atmosphere already contains tiny sulfate and sea salt particles, called aerosols, that reflect energy from the sun into space. Some have suggested injecting sulfate particles directly into the stratosphere to enhance the effect, and also to reduce the rate of future warming that would result from continued increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
But a UW modeling study shows that sulfate particles in the stratosphere will not necessarily offset all the effects of future increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Additionally, there still is likely to be significant warming in regions where climate change impacts originally prompted a desire for geoengineered solutions, said Kelly McCusker, a UW doctoral student in atmospheric sciences.
The modeling study shows that significant changes would still occur because even increased aerosol levels cannot balance changes in atmospheric and oceanic circulation brought on by higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
“There is no way to keep the climate the way it is now. Later this century, you would not be able to recreate present-day Earth just by adding sulfate aerosols to the atmosphere,” McCusker said.
She is lead author of a paper detailing the findings published online in December in the Journal of Climate. Coauthors are UW atmospheric sciences faculty David Battisti and Cecilia Bitz.
Using the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s Community Climate System Model version 3 and working at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, the researchers found that there would, in fact, be less overall warming with a combination of increased atmospheric aerosols and increased carbon dioxide than there would be with just increased carbon dioxide.
They also found that injecting sulfate particles into the atmosphere might even suppress temperature increases in the tropics enough to prevent serious food shortages and limit negative impacts on tropical organisms in the coming decades.
But temperature changes in polar regions could still be significant. Increased winter surface temperatures in northern Eurasia could have serious ramifications for Arctic marine mammals not equipped to adapt quickly to climate change. In Antarctic winters, changes in surface winds would also bring changes in ocean circulation with potentially significant consequences for ice sheets in West Antarctica.
Even with geoengineering, there still could be climate emergencies – such as melting ice sheets or loss of polar bear habitat – in the polar regions, the scientists concluded. They added that the odds of a “climate surprise” would be high because the uncertainties about the effects of geoengineering would be added to existing uncertainties about climate change.
The research was funded by the Tamaki Foundation and the National Science Foundation.
R Gates
As with all liberals and Lefties,
those billionaires you mention don’t practice leftism
on their own turf–after all, they’re not suicidal.
It’s only in other people’s lives do they advocate meddling.
In their own they keep every penny they can from the IRS.
It’s exactly in the political arena where their ignorance shows
on any topic outside their business experience.
Their guilt at their great wealth has to be assuaged
by the Leftist allegiance of the philosophically shallow.
While they support politicians trying to tax their income,
why should they care? They already have their wealth
and like any old money they instinctively resent
any increase in the supply of ultra-rich,
so they support politicans who cut off the ladder
for the productive, who get taxed as if they were already wealthy.
All their mental abilities are restricted to their specialty, business,
so regarding any other topic they”re the shallowest in the room.
You also need to be a gentleman and apologize for the insulting aspersion of ‘prattling’,
which is a bit much coming from an ally of AlGore, who does nothing but prattle.
Save your Warmista insults for those not posting here.
For information – sulfate and nitrate aerosols are heavily implicated in pulmonary morbidity and some mortality (ie death amongst the elderly). Any suggestion of injecting these aerosols into the atmosphere in a manner that allows them to circulate to the ground level troposphere is likely to increase rates of morbidity and mortality. To put it simply the solution could harm more people than the problem.
“Sorry you fail to understand the momentum of the climate system can take decades and even centuries to work back to equilibrium once a forcing has been initiated on the scope of a 40% increase in CO2, and similar large increases in methane and N2O. The analogy to a cake was a bit allegorical, but perhaps such things are lost on certain people”.
That forcing you speak of R. Gates, is the changes to the gravitation force on atmosphere relative to our rotation velocity and placement in our planetary system, that determine changes in the points of atmospheric pressure and ultimately its temperature gradiant and hence our climate. It is so.
Where did you get the invalid view of greenhouse from?
Some superstitious scientific dope of the nineteenth century no doubt.
World temperatures could be going down fast soon and scientists are look ing at methods of cooling the planet. How long will it be before they are also looking at methods of warming the planet?
Only fools do not have a back up plan!
Ask yourself gentlemen, how its it a greenhouse when its hotter on the outside?
Or, do we right off the statosphere and mesophere?
What climate equilibrium?
The idea that doofusses are thinking about tryng to ecoengineer the climate sends cold chills up my spine. Talk about hubris.
Another model based load of suspect research on Polar bears. A warming Arctic will kill them all off claim that is refuted by the facts. These animals do not require an ice flow from which to hunt it is that at the moment their main prey lives off the ice pack. Where did these prey animals live and pup during previous much warmer warm periods? On land if ice was scarce and there they were hunted by the bears.
Any plan to try to mess with the atmosphere to get what is perceived to be the ‘ideal’ surface temperature is a plan by megalomaniac idiots.Any cure worse than the disease must be dumped.
“There is no way to keep the climate the way it is now. Later this century, you would not be able to recreate present-day Earth just by adding sulfate aerosols to the atmosphere,” McCusker said.
Gee! Climate changes. Who’da thunkit?
Robert in Perth mentions King Canute (Knut!) .. This much-maligned man was trying to prove that a man could NOT turn back the tide, despite the flattering of his courtiers. I am not sure if this proves anything about our current situation.
Anthea
Yeah.. but only in the GCM’s which are clearly wrong in regard to water vapor. Where is the SOLID evidence your ‘thermostat’ can be moved by CO2? On top of that our contribution is around 3%. Every summer we see a robust rate of CO2 decrease followed by a slightly greater rate of increase six months later. Doesn’t that suggest a natural system with a dynamic capacity that easily over-powers our teenie weenie contribution of an essential trace gas whose true ‘greenhouse effect’ contribution is not yet actually known and may even have a net cooling affect at such small concentrations? There is zero evidence that CO2 ever drove global temperatures up so why is it so difficult to believe that maybe they really do not?
True or false, CO2 would be going up right now if we humans never existed. Not only do I think that that is true, I believe the difference in concentration would be too so small to even detect.
How about we make a deal? I’ll stop calling them the commie dictators they actually are when they step down and have an open, democratic, freely elected form of government …right after they admit to and apologize for the thousands of students they murdered in and around Tiananmen Square back on June Fourth 1989.
How much would you bet that their nuke tipped ICBM target list no longer includes the USA?
The cries of “i’m melting, I’m melting” are nothing more than the distant echoes of the Wicked Witch of The West. Next it’ll be Chicken Little they’ll be rallying behind.
The h*** with them, I’m going ice fishing.
To explain the lack of global warming one guy blames sulphates, even though the levels were higher in the 1980s. In AGW, if it gives the ‘right’ answer correlation=causation, no proof required!
Rather than admit the lack of warming rubbishes all their models the AGW crowd jump on the bandwagon. Now they are proposing it as a solution even though it is not proved as a cause!
Science=zero.
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It appears you take a very mechanistic viewpoint as to how the earth’s climate system would respond to significant changes in the state of various physical parameters, those which you choose to label here as being forcings.
So I ask these two questions, which are founded in a similarly mechanistic type of paradigm concerning how the earth’s climate system actually behaves:
(1) What would be the atmosphere’s normal operating temperature range, stated in terms of global mean temperature, in the absence of rapid and significant changes to the quantitative values of those physical parameters which you label here as forcings?
(2) How long should we expect the atmosphere’s normal operating temperature range to persist over time, stated in terms of an expected time of persistence, in the absence of rapid and significant changes to the quantitative values of those physical parameters which you label here as forcings?
What I am asking for are specific quantitative values for the normal operating temperature range and for the expected period of persistence of that temperature range.
If climate science truly is a science, and if it is a science which operates within a largely mechanistic analytical paradigm — this is what the GCMs are all about; i.e., taking a highly mechanistic viewpoint concerning how the earth’s climate system operates — then values for these two parameters ought to exist somewhere in the peer reviewed climate science literature.
Unfortunately, I myself have been unable to find a source for these values, whatever it is they are.
Mr. Gates, in recognition of your extensive knowledge of the topic, could I ask you to quote the actual values for these two parameters; i.e., the atmosphere’s normal operating temperature range and the expected period of persistence for that temperature range?
A citation would be very useful as well, if you can provide it. Thanks in advance.
To paraphrase the NRA:
Climate doesn’t kill polar bears, guns do!
From 5,000 in the late 1960s to 25,000 today. All you have to do is stop shooting them and the population rebounds nicely.
As to geo-engineering. Where is the brake pedal and reverse gear? Getting rid of smallpox was a nice bit of GE but spending trillions to cool Earth? Have they looked at the temps for the past decade? Have they ever looked at the ice core records of “inter-glacial” periods? They are called that for a reason.
[Increased winter surface temperatures in northern Eurasia could have serious ramifications for Arctic marine mammals not equipped to adapt quickly to climate change.]
So maybe the brown bear habitat will move north. Do they taste any different than a polar bear?
Mr Gates:
Is that another empty bag that I see in your hand? GK
I see that R. Gates has successfully hijacked another thread. By merely reciting a half-baked meme.
Just a thought: couldn’t these idiots’ actions give rise to a manmade Ice Age?