An Exploration of Scenarios and Strategies of Solar Geoengineering
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The climate is warming as a result of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and progress to curb emissions is slow. In response, some scientists have been researching methods for reflecting some of the incoming energy from the sun in order to temporarily offset some of the effects from GHG warming. The two main methods that are being researched are stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), which involves lofting aerosols or their precursors into the lower stratosphere, and marine cloud brightening (MCB), which involves spraying sea water droplets into low marine clouds. There are many different variables in any potential SAI or MCB deployment, which makes analysis in context difficult. To this end, changes in certain scenarios and strategies were analyzed to determine how they would affect the outcomes of a deployment. First, the effect of delaying the start of an SAI deployment was analyzed. Second, SAI strategies that minimize changes in the climate were derived. Third, this was repeated in a different model, the results were compared, and conclusions were drawn about how inter-model uncertainty could inform the logistics of a deployment. Lastly, similar strategy analysis was repeated with MCB, as well as a combination of SAI and MCB.