Willis covered this before on WUWT, with Every Silver Lining Has A Cloud. Its baaaack.
Figure 1. Artist’s conception of cloud-making ships. Of course, the first storm would flip this over immediately, but heck, it’s only a fantasy, so who cares? SOURCE
From the University of Washington and the Royal Society
Experiment would test cloud geoengineering as way to slow warming
Even though it sounds like science fiction, researchers are taking a second look at a controversial idea that uses futuristic ships to shoot salt water high into the sky over the oceans, creating clouds that reflect sunlight and thus counter global warming.
University of Washington atmospheric physicist Rob Wood describes a possible way to run an experiment to test the concept on a small scale in a comprehensive paper published this month in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.
The point of the paper — which includes updates on the latest study into what kind of ship would be best to spray the salt water into the sky, how large the water droplets should be and the potential climatological impacts — is to encourage more scientists to consider the idea of marine cloud brightening and even poke holes in it. He and a colleague detail an experiment to test the concept.
“What we’re trying to do is make the case that this is a beneficial experiment to do,” Wood said. With enough interest in cloud brightening from the scientific community, funding for an experiment may become possible, he said.
The theory behind so-called marine cloud brightening is that adding particles, in this case sea salt, to the sky over the ocean would form large, long-lived clouds. Clouds appear when water forms around particles. Since there is a limited amount of water in the air, adding more particles creates more, but smaller, droplets.
“It turns out that a greater number of smaller drops has a greater surface area, so it means the clouds reflect a greater amount of light back into space,” Wood said. That creates a cooling effect on Earth.
Marine cloud brightening is part of a broader concept known as geoengineering which encompasses efforts to use technology to manipulate the environment. Brightening, like other geoengineering proposals, is controversial for its ethical and political ramifications and the uncertainty around its impact. But those aren’t reasons not to study it, Wood said.
“I would rather that responsible scientists test the idea than groups that might have a vested interest in proving its success,” he said. The danger with private organizations experimenting with geoengineering is that “there is an assumption that it’s got to work,” he said.
Wood and his colleagues propose trying a small-scale experiment to test feasibility and begin to study effects. The test should start by deploying sprayers on a ship or barge to ensure that they can inject enough particles of the targeted size to the appropriate elevation, Wood and a colleague wrote in the report. An airplane equipped with sensors would study the physical and chemical characteristics of the particles and how they disperse.
The next step would be to use additional airplanes to study how the cloud develops and how long it remains. The final phase of the experiment would send out five to 10 ships spread out across a 100 kilometer, or 62 mile, stretch. The resulting clouds would be large enough so that scientists could use satellites to examine them and their ability to reflect light.
Wood said there is very little chance of long-term effects from such an experiment. Based on studies of pollutants, which emit particles that cause a similar reaction in clouds, scientists know that the impact of adding particles to clouds lasts only a few days.
Still, such an experiment would be unusual in the world of climate science, where scientists observe rather than actually try to change the atmosphere.
Wood notes that running the experiment would advance knowledge around how particles like pollutants impact the climate, although the main reason to do it would be to test the geoengineering idea.
A phenomenon that inspired marine cloud brightening is ship trails: clouds that form behind the paths of ships crossing the ocean, similar to the trails that airplanes leave across the sky. Ship trails form around particles released from burning fuel.
But in some cases ship trails make clouds darker. “We don’t really know why that is,” Wood said.
Despite increasing interest from scientists like Wood, there is still strong resistance to cloud brightening.
“It’s a quick-fix idea when really what we need to do is move toward a low-carbon emission economy, which is turning out to be a long process,” Wood said. “I think we ought to know about the possibilities, just in case.”
The authors of the paper are treading cautiously.
“We stress that there would be no justification for deployment of [marine cloud brightening] unless it was clearly established that no significant adverse consequences would result. There would also need to be an international agreement firmly in favor of such action,” they wrote in the paper’s summary.
There are 25 authors on the paper, including scientists from University of Leeds, University of Edinburgh and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The lead author is John Latham of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the University of Manchester, who pioneered the idea of marine cloud brightening.
Wood’s research was supported by the UW College of the Environment Institute.
“””””…..Julian Flood says:
August 21, 2012 at 4:24 pm…..”””””
Julian, why do you give us the lamest of all rationalizations for doing something; ‘everybody does it so we might as well do some too.’ (waste money and resources; specially other people’s money)
For a start, cloud effect is a closed circuit negative feedback effect.
A warming ocean evaporates more water into the atmosphere (see Wentz et al, SCIENCE jul 7 2007). More water in the atmosphere (7% per deg C surface Temperature rise) blocks more solar energy from reaching the deep ocean storage. That lower absobed solar energy leads to a cooler earth, which leads to more precipitation (see Wentz et al above), and more precipitation leads to less water vapo and clouds in the atmosphere (see Wentz), and less water in the atmosphere leads to more solar energy reaching the deep ocean which warms it up.
Aerosols and green house gases are a red herring. More warming due to ghg means you will get increased cloud cover to shut it down, and more aerosols mean you clouds form easier, so you don’t need to evaporate as much water; and remember THE EXCHANGE RATE IS 7% MORE (OR LESS) CLOUDS PER ONE DEG C CHANGE IN SURFACE TEMPERATURE.
That is a simply huge negative feedback regulating system and it will negate any effect of your steam armada, no matter where or how or how big you deploy it.
If you think it is such a great idea; why don’t YOU invest YOUR money, and buy your own steam kettle. Quit coming up with more ways to waste taxpayer dollars on nutty schemes that are nowhere sanctioned in at least the USA Constitution; and will have no net effect, but to “employ” the terminally unemployable; who themselves selected their own role in life.
IF?
What a joke! We already KNOW that whoever stands to make a lot of money will be telling us it has to be done.
Perhaps Julian is somehow invested in or otherwise stands to make money from this lame idea at our expense? Their ‘better understanding’ will just be a pack of more lies to justify lining their pockets and carpet the ocean with these things. .. or at least get a huge government loan like Solyndra.
Next he’ll tell us we have to do it … ‘for the children’.
Yeah, ignorance of not realizing people are reaching into your pocket yet again to steal even more of your money. You people will NOT fool us twice. Your GCM’s (developed at great expense) have FAILED to connect to reality and have not provided ANY benefit to anybody beyond the pay checks to those who were paid to develop them. “Combating Climate Change” is beginning to look a lot like the “War of Drugs”.
Why don’t you do something useful like figure out how to prevent the next ice age?
I’m with Julian, what’s with all the derisive skepticism. Useful criticism is one thing although some the concerns with energy consumption, water vapor transfers and the like have been previously addressed or are addressed in the thread and noone seems much aware. I can see that it is brought on in a measure by imitation of all the chicken little nonsense coming from the warmists and aimed more at the notion of hypocrisy. And I celebrate derision of the precautionary principle which the project exponent gives a nod to, although he seems insular to the notion that the precautionary principle knows no end. If testing an idea brings it closer to possible adoption and the idea is not known to be 100% safe (i.e. all ideas) then one should object to the testing . . .
Unfortunately, I don’t read the objections here principally as a sarcastic send up of the precautionary principle.
My own tendencies are precisely the opposite. So far as I can tell, the green movement generally rejects geo-engineering, and anything they reject I tend to think might not be a bad idea. We do it all the time anyway. I think it is reasonably well documented that human agricultural practices have had enormous macro environmental effects
Another reasonable criticism of the proposal is the extent to which it attempts to dissociate experiments from whatever industry might actually make it work. Inventing anything that could depend to some extent on collective will for adoption, be it cars that wanted roads or bridges, AC power and its grids, wind turbines or cloud machines, the problem of rent seeking will always attend the collective decisions for implementation. But the precautionary implication that folks with an economic incentive shouldn’t be involved is absurd.
Of course the researchers devotion to the precautionary principle in general is absurd and essentially self defeating, taken to any kind of logical conclusion. He insists that they would only want to implement geo-engineering of this sort if it was proven to be essentially 100% safe. Of course that can’t be proven, and just experiment makes it more likely that sometime a system less then absolutely safe could be adopted, so one committed to the precautionary principle is free to oppose the experiment as well.
Rather we should accept that these discoveries could be a boon or a boondoogle. If we leave these decisions up to technocrats we shall surely get the latter. For if the experiment were successful, who would have their hand on the thermostat, the IPCC? That would be the joke of the century – or the next. Its not the least bit clear to me that we shouldn’t be also experimenting with how to warm the globe. But as a matter of priorities, resources for implementation would be better informed by the kind of relative thinking that Bjorn Lomborg has been doing regarding improvement of the human condition. That isn’t to say his list is the definitive set of priorities for mankind, but that a sense of ordering of priority that has completely escaped our current renewable energy exhortations.
Subject of course to the cautions about lies, damn lies and statistics – alternatively credited to Mark Twain and Abraham LIncoln – these are discussions that readily descend to the level of an engaged citizenry.
Rather the experiment or willingness to engage in it is separate from any decision that the planet ought to be shielded. As far as I’m concerned they should be experimenting with how to warm the planet as well, it sure doesn’t seem like CO2 emission is really getting the job done very effectively. Who says we want it cooler? But that isn’t an excuse for not experimenting. One can be equally critical of the extent to which our priorities in research are skewed by the current warmist fad and I would think the research agenda itself could do well to attend to Lomborg like efforts at priority setting. But I believe research should be as much the product of the eclectic energies of researchers as some expert body deciding what needs to get researched. So bring on the cloud machines.
Once upon a time they were going to put a cloud machine in the rhode island airport – public art – but the taxpayers put a stop to it. Ironically, I was kind of interested to see how it worked. Bring on the [experimental] cloud ships.
brian
george e smith says: August 21, 2012 at 10:46 pm
quote
For a start, cloud effect is a closed circuit negative feedback effect.
unquote
So the science is settled is it? Not if we are disrupting the production of aerosols by oil spill. Have you looked at the picture of the Mississippi mouth on the blue marble picture? Hang on… Google Google… the one I mean is at http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/6760135001/
See the effect of the river flow into the Gulf? So what’s going on there? Now find the images of the Gulf oil spill at http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/oilspill/index.html and see if you can work out what’s making the clouds vanish in images 22 28 38 and 40. I want to know what we’re doing to aerosols and I want to know what altering aerosol numbers and properties will do to the stratocumulus layer — but eyeballing images without the research that this demonstrator will provide is just handwaving.
quote
THE EXCHANGE RATE IS 7% MORE (OR LESS) CLOUDS PER ONE DEG C CHANGE IN SURFACE TEMPERATURE.
unquote
If the Earth were in a pristine state then you might have a point. It is not. We are altering ecologies and even simple surface physics all over the oceans. I think the cloud ship demonstrator will find that this is having an effect. Also, it might well settle the argument about smaller droplets making clouds whiter or not to the satisfaction of those who otherwise cannot be convinced.
quote
If you think it is such a great idea; why don’t YOU invest YOUR money, and buy your own steam kettle
unquote.
Now you are being silly. I think the CERN cosmic ray hypothesis is a good idea but I don’t have to fund a supercollider to have an opinion. BTW, the proposed ship does not heat the water it sprays out, it just squirts it onto a rotating disc where it is broken down into a fine mist. No steam, no kettle. But you knew that, didn’t you, having read the original proposal. You did read it, didn’t you? Ah, thought not.
What are you afraid of? That the science of this proposal will not back your world view? Relax, it will almost certainly prove — purely as a by-product of the engineering — that it’s better than we thought, that the oceans self-regulate and if we just take a little more care then everything will be OK.
Incidentally, my original point was that some of the responses here were getting more like RC every day. Thank you for providing such a perfect demonstration of what I mean.
Mike M says: August 22, 2012 at 1:00 am
quote
Why don’t you do something useful like figure out how to prevent the next ice age?
unquote
If the aerosol ship demonstrates that the climate is very sensitive to aerosol numbers (which I suspect is the case and welcome the chance to see some engineering proof) then we already have the answer: synthetic surfactants which are resistant to biodegradation if allowed to spread over the oceans would reduce aerosols and thus low level cloud, lower albedo and warm the planet. Oil too, light oil, that would do the same. We wouldn’t even have to do anything special, we could just let effluent from our cities flow down the rivers… Oh, look at that, that’s what we’re already doing. I wonder if we’re warming the planet by spilling all this muck. I know, let’s find out if the world is sensitive to aerosol numbers — we could build a ship to squirt aerosols into the air and see what happens. Then we’d know how to warm things up if we need to… Have a look at those images I mention above, I’m convinced the spills are lowering albedo but then it’s my theory and I’m fond of it.
JF
george e smith, my apologies, I suggested above that your response was a perfect illustration of my point about the tone of this thread. I was wrong. The perfect illustration was this one which I quote in all its glory:
quote
Mike M says: August 22, 2012 at 12:43 am
Julian Flood: If this proposal leads to a better understanding of the Earth’s cooling system then it would be cheap at a thousand times the price.
IF?
What a joke! We already KNOW that whoever stands to make a lot of money will be telling us it has to be done.
Perhaps Julian is somehow invested in or otherwise stands to make money from this lame idea at our expense? Their ‘better understanding’ will just be a pack of more lies to justify lining their pockets and carpet the ocean with these things. .. or at least get a huge government loan like Solyndra.
Next he’ll tell us we have to do it … ‘for the children’.
unquote
Pluperfect, hyperperfect, more real than real. Mike, old chap, don’t you think you’d feel more at home on RC?
JF
Of course, the first storm would flip this over immediately, but heck, it’s only a fantasy, so who cares?
———
Someone has forgotten about sailing ships. You know the ones with big wind catchers on masts that don’t fall over.
I’m not a scientist or engineer, but I think the idea has merit.
Initially, I was very skeptical of Julian’s proposal several years ago, but that was an emotional reaction to the artist’s rendering.
Many proposals for albedo modification have been made over the years. From orbital sunshades costing 45 to 135 Sagans a year, to stratospheric sulfur enhancement and whitewashing roofs. Brute force concepts requiring the injection of millions of tons per year of potentially chemically active substances into or above the atmosphere seem unworkable solely due to the energy costs of lifting the material to the required altitude.
Julian’s idea of using sea water as a catalyst avoids those problems. Selective enhancement of an existing natural process rather than introducing a new complex process also seems prudent.
It should be relatively easy and inexpensive to test the essential elements of Julian’s idea. The historical record of the Baltic Exchange Dry Index shows the daily lease costs of large bulk cargo ships are currently as cheap as they have ever been over the last ten years. Perhaps a land based trial on an island would suffice.
A previous poster pointed out the wide range of early flying machine design proposals that seem quaint our eyes. Samuel Langley’s Folly was a laughingstock at the time, but eight years later Glenn Curtiss installed a more powerful motor and showed the contraption could fly. The history of rocketry is also full of absurdity and even more spectacular failures.
A small proof of concept test generating real data would be much more useful than extrapolation, order of magnitude calculations or ridicule.
Brian,
It’s not my idea, it’s that of an engineering partnership, Salter and Latham. Salter was the man who designed the Salter duck, the little nodding float that produced power from waves: the idea was poo-pooed by a civil servant who said it would not work so the idea was shelved. Video of a line of ducks with waves hitting one side and smooth water on the other shows that they did indeed milk power from the waves. The next stage, making the system robust against storms, was never demonstrated and that’s where I have my doubts.
Salter and Latham want to put more aerosols into the boundary layer. My idea, all mine, is that we’ve disrupted the ocean’s capacity to produce aerosols.
JF
Strange how AGW adherents believe that clouds are important to climate (else they would not be proposing this), and also believe climate models that fail to take them into account.
Either clouds are important or they are not. We know they are, and some AGW’s apparently feel they are too, but the whole AGW ethos is that they are irrelevant.