The largest insight I draw from this paper is the reminder that there are fairly large-scale activities going on right now that might provide useful information regarding SRM if we had systems set up to monitor resulting changes.
This paper documents one of them - the large reversal of sulfate loadings in the eastern half of the US, mostly occurring since the 1990 Clean Air Act was passed. And those reductions will continue. Rules promulgated by EPA in the last six months will required millions of tons more of SO2 and NOx reductions over the next 3-5 years. It would be nice to do a rapid assessment of what additional instrumentation might produce even more useful information, relevant to the many unanswered questions about SRM. To be sure, most of these reductions are occurring in the troposphere and so may not be directly applicable to SRM in the stratosphere. Still, I imagine there could be useful information to be gathered. It might be much easier to get governments to devote some money to such an enhanced measurement effort than to try to stand up some new "geoengineering program." From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike MacCracken Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2012 8:38 PM To: Geoengineering Subject: Re: [geo] Regional SRM experiment Hi David-Very interesting, and just why it might be possible to do something to limit warming in an area like the Arctic, which, as was documented over and over again at the Montreal IPY meeting last week, is changing very fast. Mike MacCracken ******** On 4/28/12 10:06 AM, "David Hawkins" <[email protected]> wrote: Climatic effects of 1950-2050 changes in US anthropogenic aerosols - Part 2: Climate response http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/12/3349/2012/acp-12-3349-2012.pdf Reduction in air pollution from coal fired power stations due to environmental regulations since the 1980s has increased regional global warming in the Central and Eastern United States. Climate scientists from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) found that particulate pollution, particularly from coal fired power stations, caused a global warming hole, or a large cold patch reducing temperatures by up to 1 degree C in the region, particularly lowering maximum temperatures in Summer and Autumn. Since I have spent a good deal of the past several decades advocating for rapid deployment of particle reducing techniques, I guess I can be tagged as an inadvertent geoengineer. :>) Sent from my iPad -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering?hl=en.
