WASHINGTON (AP) — Government scientists have come up with a new concept for how to potentially cool a earth overheating: Play with the upper atmosphere to make it a little drier.
Water vapor (water in its gaseous form) is a natural greenhouse gas that traps heat, as is carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and gas. So researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA calculate that if they could inject ice high into the air, the water vapor in the upper atmosphere would become a little drier, and that could offset a small amount of the heat. caused by man.
It’s just the spark of an initial idea, said the lead author of a study in Wednesday’s journal. Scientific advances.
The idea of drying out the upper atmosphere is the latest addition to what some scientists call a last-ditch toolbox for tackling climate change by manipulating the world’s atmosphere or oceans. Known as geoengineeringIt is often rejected due to possible side effects and is usually mentioned not as an alternative to reducing carbon pollution, but as a complement to emissions cuts.
“This is not something we can implement at this time,” said Joshua Schwarz, a NOAA physicist and lead author. “It’s about exploring what might be possible in the future and identifying research directions.”
The way it would possibly work is that high-tech planes could inject ice particles about 17 kilometers (11 miles) high, just below the stratosphere, where air slowly rises. Then, ice and cold air rise to where it’s colder and cause water vapor to turn into ice and fall, dehydrating the stratosphere, Schwarz said. So far there is no viable injection technique, he said.
At its maximum, injecting two tons per week, it could possibly extract enough water vapor to reduce warming by a small amount, about five percent of the total warming created by carbon from burning fossil fuels, Schwarz said. It’s not much and should not be used as an alternative to reduce pollution, he said.
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Schwarz isn’t quite sure what side effects might occur, and that’s the problem, other scientists said.
Intentionally modifying Earth’s atmosphere to address climate change is likely to create cascading new problems, said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver, who was not part of the study. He said the engineering aspect of this makes sense, but he compared the concept to a children’s story where a king who loves cheese is invaded by mice, gets cats to deal with the mice, then dogs to scare away the cats and lions to get rid of them. from the dogs and elephants to eliminate the lions and then back to the mice to scare away the elephants.
It’s just the spark of an initial idea, said the lead author of a study published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. #GlobalHeating
It makes more sense to address the initial problem: cheese or carbon dioxide, Weaver said.
Lynn Russell, an atmospheric chemist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who was not part of the research, said the idea is worth examining, but the study “doesn’t have many answers given all the uncertainties.”
Groups of the US National Academy of Sciences Even the United Nations Environment Program has analyzed the ethics, side effects, legal complications, and benefits of geoengineering with varying degrees of skepticism and cautious interest.
In it UN environment assemblyNations are considering a resolution to study solar radiation modification (essentially putting particles in the air to reflect sunlight and cool the atmosphere) and possible regulations on which countries or companies would do it.
“If you’re going to do indoor lab experiments, maybe that’s fine,” UNEP Executive Director Inger Andersen told The Associated Press. “But we do believe, from UNEP’s perspective, that the moment we go outdoors and start doing small and large scale outdoor experiments, we need to… have a global conversation.
“I think modifying solar radiation is a bit like artificial intelligence,” Andersen said. “Once a genie is out of the bottle, you can’t put it back in. It is a technology that is there. “We do not believe in any way that it should be considered a climate solution.”
Carlos Mureithi contributed from Nairobi, Kenya.
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