By: Zahra Williams Summary: Stratospheric aerosol geoengineering is the process of injecting a layer of aerosol particles to the upper atmosphere in an attempt to decrease climate changes caused by increased levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. Since climate change and global warming are often assessed by the surface temperature of the planet, the natural solution would be to cool off the planet which is what stratospheric aerosol geoengineering hopes to achieve. The amount of aerosols and how long the aerosol cloud is maintained in the stratosphere determines the amount of cooling will occur. Researchers have discovered that reducing warming by 50% by adding aerosols to the stratosphere could decrease major climate hazards in almost all regions; only a small fraction of land regions experienced worsening climate change effects. However, this method can only help fix the effects of climate change but not the main cause, which is an increase in CO₂ and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. There are many benefits to this method to mitigating climate change such as an increase in plant productivity, reducing or even reducing the sea level and amount of land ice sheets melting, and cooling down the planet. However, there are also many risks. Some of the risks include possible drought in Asia and Africa, less solar power, continued ocean acidification from CO₂, and human error. There is also a concern about how much it would cost to do this and if we even have the right to. Stratospheric aerosol geoengineering is a viable option to help mitigate the effects of climate change, but not without many costs. Why we should care? Climate change is becoming a more pressing concern over time, and this method is a viable way to mitigate the effects of global warming without disrupting the environment in disastrous ways. Example Article. https://www.azocleantech.com/news.aspx?newsID=27094 I found this particular article interesting because I’ve always been interested in climate change and ways to possibly reverse its effects, and I plan to work in a career that helps develop ways to accomplish this. This article explains what stratospheric aerosol geoengineering is and how it can help mitigate climate change and global warming. It provides research obtained during tests to ensure that this method is safe for the environment as well as some quotes from people that study this topic. It also went over the possible risks that come with using this method, and how some of them have been disproved by tests. Science in Action.
Dr. Pete Irvine is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University. Pete Irvine is a Earth system scientist and interdisciplinary scholar working at Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Program. He studies climate research and the effects of solar geoengineering. He researches the climate and broader impacts of solar geoengineering and relates them to the risks posed by climate change. His research is relevant to my topic because solar geoengineering relates to stratospheric aerosol geoengineering. Solar geoengineering is the idea that we can cool the planet by increasing the amount of sunlight reflected back to space, similar to how stratospheric aerosol geoengineering uses particles injected into the stratosphere to cool the planet.
3 Comments
Mallory Evatz
11/23/2020 09:58:11
This article was really interesting because I have never heard of aerosal engineering. It's comforting to know we are coming up with solutions to reduce the effects of climate change however, we definitely do need to access how the options weigh out in terms of how this could negatively impact different regions. Thinking about how this is one solution though makes me think that maybe we can develop a similar strategy with less risk.
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Jenna Steele
11/26/2020 16:11:31
Hi Zahra, this blog post was incredible! This is definitely not something that I had every heard about before so it was a great learning opportunity. Its amazing to see how far science has come and what we are doing now to try an limit the effects of climate change. I love that you pointed out that this is a downstream fix, only helping the after and that we have to make the change now so that we hopefully don't have to fix the after in the future. This is a topic that I will definitely be researching more after reading this.
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Michael Knust
12/19/2020 19:28:58
I have never heard of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering. It is interesting that there is a quick way to reverse the effects of climate change, but unfortunately, there are several possible issues with it. Hopefully if governments put more importance on addressing the climate crisis, we will not have to resort to extreme methods to counteract the issue.
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