Data from: High-latitude stratospheric aerosol geoengineering may be more effective if injection is limited to spring
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Abstract
Stratospheric aerosol geoengineering focused on the Arctic could substantially reduce local and worldwide impacts of anthropogenic global warming. Because the Arctic receives little sunlight during the winter, stratospheric aerosols present in the winter at high latitudes have little impact on the climate, whereas stratospheric aerosols present during the summer achieve larger changes in radiative forcing. Injecting SO2 in the spring leads to peak aerosol optical depth (AOD) in the summer. The data presented here contains the results of our simulations, in which we demonstrate that spring injection produces approximately twice as much summer AOD as year-round injection and restores approximately twice as much September sea ice, resulting in less increase in stratospheric sulfur burden, stratospheric heating, and stratospheric ozone depletion per unit of sea ice restored. We also find that differences in AOD between different seasonal injection strategies are small compared to the difference between annual and spring injection.