Another geoengineering scheme plans to use planes and ships to cool the planet

From the UNIVERSITY OF EASTERN FINLAND, and the unexpected consequence of Geoengineering Department, comes this thesis from a grad student:

Atmospheric aerosols can significantly cool down climate

This portrait of global aerosols was produced by a GEOS-5 simulation at a 10-kilometer resolution. Dust (red) is lifted from the surface, sea salt (blue) swirls inside cyclones, smoke (green) rises from fires, and sulfate particles (white) stream from volcanoes and fossil fuel emissions. Image credit: William Putman, NASA/Goddard
This portrait of global aerosols was produced by a GEOS-5 simulation at a 10-kilometer resolution. Dust (red) is lifted from the surface, sea salt (blue) swirls inside cyclones, smoke (green) rises from fires, and sulfate particles (white) stream from volcanoes and fossil fuel emissions. Image credit: William Putman, NASA/Goddard

It is possible to significantly slow down and even temporarily stop the progression of global warming by increasing the atmospheric aerosol concentration, shows a new study from the University of Eastern Finland. However, climate engineering does not remove the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

The study used global climate models to analyse the ability of atmospheric aerosols to cool down the climate, as well as the consequences of their use. The study focused on methods of climate engineering, which intentionally and artificially increase the atmospheric aerosol concentration in order to cool down the climate.

Furthermore, the cooling effects of current atmospheric aerosol emissions were analysed. The study found that aerosol particles injected into the stratosphere proved extremely efficient in cooling down the climate. The method mimics massive volcanic eruptions which release aerosol particles into the stratosphere that reflect solar radiation back into space, thus cooling down the climate even up to years. Atmospheric aerosols injected into the troposphere, on the other hand, can effectively impact the climate through cloud formation. Atmospheric aerosols increase the number of cloud droplets in clouds and make them whiter, which means that they can more effectively reflect solar radiation back into space.

The study also showed that current traffic and industry induced aerosol emissions cool down the climate. However, their cooling effect on the global temperature is significantly smaller than the warming effect of current greenhouse gas emissions. Nevertheless, it would be possible to harness, for example, global airline traffic and ship traffic for the purposes of atmospheric temperature regulation by increasing the sulphuric concentrations of fuels. This would make it possible to significantly increase stratospheric aerosol concentrations and cloud reflectivity in open sea. However, sulphuric concentrations of fuels would have to be increased beyond the levels defined in international agreements. In addition, the cooling effect would mainly be targeted at the northern hemisphere, which is responsible for a far greater share of global traffic than the southern hemisphere.

Climate engineering not enough, greenhouse gas restrictions vital

The study also shows that not even the most promising methods of climate engineering can cool down the climate, unless the growth of greenhouse gas emissions can be brought under control. This is indicated by a study that analysed the climate effects of a volcanic eruption at a time when aerosol concentrations in the stratosphere were increased for climate engineering purposes. The cooling effect of the volcanic eruption was significantly smaller than it would have been under normal circumstances. The sulphur dioxide released in the volcanic eruption combined with the sulphur dioxide injected into the stratosphere for climate engineering purposes leads to relatively larger particle sizes in comparison to a volcanic eruption in current conditions. The ability of large particles to reflect solar radiation is weaker and their life cycle in the atmosphere shorter than those of smaller particles.

In practice, the consequences would be similar in a situation where the stratospheric aerosol concentration is increased for climate engineering purposes. If greenhouse gas emissions continue to grow, reversing the resulting global warming by climate engineering would require the injection of increasingly large amounts of aerosols into the atmosphere. The consequence would be increasingly large relative particle sizes with a smaller cooling effect, thus weakening the relative effect of climate engineering. This means that climate engineering is not able, not even in theory, to reverse global warming caused by growing greenhouse emissions, if they continue to increase at the current rate also in the future. Moreover, climate engineering can’t fully reverse all consequences of increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations, such as changes in rainfall. Climate change should be mitigated by reducing greenhouse gases, while climate engineering — even at its best — could provide only temporary relief in situations calling for extreme measures.

The findings were originally published in Geophysical Research Letters, Journal of Geophysical Research, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, and Environmental Research Letters.

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The doctoral dissertation by Anton Laakso, MSc, entitled Modelling radiative and climate effects of aerosols: from Anthropogenic emissions to geoengineering, is available for download at: https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/161360

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Chicken Little
May 19, 2016 12:19 pm

It’s only verboten to suggest that the geo-engineering has already started.

Pauly
May 19, 2016 12:21 pm

“Something like 55% of the modeling done in all of science is done in climate change science, even though it is a tiny fraction of the whole of science. Moreover, within climate change science almost all the research (97%) refers to modeling in some way.”
Found this quote in a recent article published on the CATO Institute web site:
http://www.cato.org/blog/climate-modeling-dominates-climate-science
If this is an early view of a paper that they are publishing, it would be very interesting to see their data and verify their methodology. If correct, it tells a sad story about climate “science”. Perhaps one day, climate scientists will work out that models do not produce data, and that model results are not observations, therefore have no relevance to hypothesis testing.

May 19, 2016 1:07 pm

Just imagine if we all started wearing tin foil hats – what that would to to the albedo? And the unintended consequences can only be beneficial!

Gamecock
May 19, 2016 1:12 pm

Billions will die.

Taylor Pohlman
May 19, 2016 1:17 pm

I seem to remember some results from an “accidental” experiment on this topic. Apparently when all planes in the US were grounded for several days after the 9/11 attack, stratospheric aerosols were drastically reduced, enough, Nature reported, to temporarily raise temperatures significantly over the continental US. A link to the brief article is here:
http://www.atmos.washington.edu/~rennert/etc/courses/pcc587/ref/Travis-etal2002_Nature.pdf
If that for a few days could raise temperatures, what must have been the effect, from the 70’s onward, of the cleanup of pollution (real pollution, like aerosols, not CO2) on the US temperature during the 80s and 90s?
I don’t know how valid the 9/11 study was, but if you accept the Nature premise, you have to believe that the “man-made” warming during that period had little to do with CO2 emissions and a lot to do with pollution cleanup.
Ironic.

willhaas
May 19, 2016 1:48 pm

So the claim is that more air pollution is good.

May 19, 2016 3:06 pm

Hm. I guess if they can’t actually FIND a problem, they need to MAKE one (and blame it on global warming, of course). Every Single Thing they touch goes wrong. Their ideas don’t work. Their efforts do enormous damage. This has always been the way. Gang Green seems immune to knowledge. Gang Green is certainly immune to learning. Is there any safe place for Saviors of the Planet? May I propose Mars?

May 19, 2016 4:06 pm

What a great idea to use various forms of pollution to counter ‘Climate Change’, what could possibly go wrong with that great idea? I suppose it is all based on those infallible ‘Climate Models’.

DredNicolson
May 19, 2016 4:26 pm

If this crazy-talk ever got green-lit, the Finnish could well be the first real climate refugees, fleeing south to escape the advancing glaciers. 😐

May 19, 2016 5:11 pm

Classic warmist alarmist junk research.
Hand on the joystick, models run on fantasy, data garbage out to the cheers of dipsey media and the alarmist disaster bed-wetters.

Coeur de Lion
May 20, 2016 2:26 am

Wasn’t there a Project West Ford aimed at injecting iron slivers into the troposphere to help Defense communications? Permanent ? Madness

May 22, 2016 2:51 pm

From Abstract “increasing cloud albedo by increasing the cloud droplet number concentration in the clouds”
This is already being done folks make no mistake

Jesse
May 24, 2016 5:15 pm

They have been doing it for at least 20 years, spraying alumnium/barium all over the US and oceans

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