He changing of the climate reaches unsustainable levels. Efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are not enough, and global warming continues to worsen. For this reason, some countries have decided to pin their hopes on geoengineering. It is a set of techniques developed by humans that allow us to change earth systems on a large scale. Complete climate manipulation. This is a common occurrence in countries like the United Arab Emirates, where rainfall is so low that scientists are responsible for it. sow the clouds into the atmosphere to artificially induce precipitation. In contrast, the United States intends to do something known as sea glow of cloudsconsisting of injecting sea salt into low clouds so that its particles act as small mirrors reflecting solar radiation into space.
Thus, the temperature of the atmosphere as well as the temperature of the ocean will be significantly reduced. In areas with Coral reefs They are starting to consider the possibility of avoiding bleaching them. But in the United States this is not the intention. Advocates of this strategy want to shorten this chain of heat waves, which already occurred last year and which threaten to become even worse this year.
It is true that the brightness of sea clouds can be effective in this regard. But there is a problem. According to a study just published in Nature Climate Changethe benefits would only be apparent at the initial stage. After that, the United States would hardly make a profit, while Europe I would have paid dearly for the consequences.
Brightening sea clouds to reduce temperatures
Lightening of sea clouds is carried out by release into the atmosphere Salty fog which is heading towards the low clouds through turbulent air movement.
This simple process climate geoengineering This will change the reflectivity of the clouds and allow solar radiation to be scattered into space.
What do climate models say?
To see how useful this would be, the authors of the just published study conducted a series of studies. climate models in which various scenarios for the implementation of this technique were simulated.
One of them generates the glow of sea clouds in Alaska and one more in California. Moreover, it was held at different times in history: some in the past, such as 2010, and others in the future, such as 2010. 2050The latter, logically, was done taking into account current forecasts for greenhouse gas emissions and climate conditions.
Thus, it was clear that the sea cloud glow technique would indeed be effective in 2010. Especially at the altitude of Alaska, where will reduce the risk of dangerous heat by 55%In California, this figure will be lower – 16%, but the benefit is still noticeable.
What happens next to the glow of sea clouds?
Unfortunately, the modeling results for 2050 were not so optimistic. That year, amid the turbulence of climate change, Alaska was unlikely to see such good results, and in California, temperatures not only failed to fall, but rose more than they otherwise would have. expected without geoengineering methods.
Moreover, the consequences will go further, causing severe heat waves in Europe. It’s unclear what the reasons are, but it appears to be related to a slowing phenomenon known as Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC is an abbreviation for the phenomenon.) This phenomenon is responsible for transporting warm waters from the tropics to the North Atlantic. Climate change will gradually change this situation, and there will come a point where the brightness of marine clouds becomes counterproductive. There will be fewer clouds in which to form sea fog, and AMOC will not carry currents as expected.
Despite all this, it seems that the best thing to do is to continue to explore other geoengineering methods that will not ultimately backfire on us. Although ideally it would be not to change the climate from above. There’s still a lot we can do here. Let’s keep trying.
Source: Hiper Textual
