Solar geoengineering can be tailored to reduce inequality or to manage specific risks, study suggests. By tailoring geoengineering efforts by region and by need, a new model promises to maximize the effectiveness of solar radiation management while mitigating its potential side effects and risks. Developed by a team of leading researchers, the study was published in the November issue of Nature Climate Change. Solar geoengineering, the goal of which is to offset the global warming caused by greenhouse gases, involves reflecting sunlight back into space. By increasing the concentrations of aerosols in the stratosphere or by creating low-altitude marine clouds, the as-yet hypothetical solar geoengineering projects would scatter incoming solar heat away from the Earth's surface.
Critics of geoengineering have long warned that such a global intervention would have unequal effects around the world and could result in unforeseen consequences. They argue that the potential gains may not be worth the risk. The study—developed in collaboration with Douglas G.
Scattering moss can restore key carbon sink - environment - 27 September 2012. "Save the bogs" isn't as catchy as "save the whales", but the cause is just as worthwhile. UK peat bogs damaged by 150 years of pollution are to be restored with a scattering of tiny mosses. The rebuilt bogs should improve water quality and could slow climate change. In the future, they might even be used to geoengineer a cooler climate by storing carbon dioxide. Peat bogs depend on a protective layer of sphagnum moss that traps the peat layers, as well as providing the raw material for new peat. But air pollution since the industrial revolution has killed much of the UK's sphagnum, leaving bare expanses of decomposing black peat that pollute water supplies and release carbon dioxide, accelerating climate change.
On 24 and 25 September, volunteers from the Moors for the Future Partnership scattered 150 million gel beads onto damaged UK peat. Each bead contained a tiny sphagnum plant, which should colonise the peat and begin restoring the protective cover. Climate time bomb Promoted Stories.
GeoengineeringWatch.org. Solar radiation management. Removing trees from snowy landscapes can help reflect more sunlight into space[1] at latitudes that have meaningful incoming solar energy in the winter. A study by Lenton and Vaughan suggest that marine cloud brightening and stratospheric sulfate aerosols are each capable of reversing the warming effect of a doubling of the level of CO2 in the atmosphere (when compared to pre-industrial levels).[4] Background[edit] The phenomenon of global dimming is widely known, and is not necessarily a climate engineering technique.
It occurs in normal conditions, due to aerosols caused by pollution, or caused naturally as a result of volcanoes and major forest fires. However, its deliberate manipulation is a tool of the geoengineer. The majority of recent global dimming has been in the troposphere, except that resulting from volcanos, which affect mainly the stratosphere. These climate engineering projects have been proposed in order to reduce global warming. Limitations[edit] Atmospheric projects[edit] One Proposal to Cool a Warming Planet: An Umbrella Made of Asteroids. Take that, space mirrors! Scientists have a new way to shield us from the sun.
The latest form of solar shield: an asteroid whose dust is stabilized beyond Earth through gravity's pull (Charlotte Lücking, based on images from ESA and NASA) Average global temperatures will likely rise by 2 to 11.5 degrees by the end of the century, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has declared. There is, of course, a very straightforward way to prevent this: reduce our carbon emissions. But for a host of reasons -- economic, cultural, political, and generally human -- implementing that solution is pretty much the opposite of straightforward. As the months and years march on, we're faced with the more and more likely proposition that we will be unable to change our ways until it's too late for the change to make a difference. Recently, though, scientists in Scotland put forward a new proposal -- this one involving, yep, an asteroid.
Insert Bruce Willis joke here.