http://geoengineeringclimateissues.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/tropospheric-sulfur-emission.html?m=1
A #Geoengineering #Climate Issues Blog
Note: "academic arguments against research into GE have been erroneously
premised on the possibility of future deployment when in truth this
deployment already happened, even if unintended." OE 4/2013
Tropospheric Sulfur Emission Geoengineering. A Conjecture.
By Oscar A. Escobar
Florida, USA – Gt. January 21, 2016
CC BY-NC 4.0
Last Updated 1/27/2016
Most of the studies available to the public about sulfur injection as a
method of SRM climate geoengineering focus on the stratosphere. But a
large gap in public information, if not knowledge, exist in regards to the
possibility of tropospheric sulfur injection (or emission, rather) as a
method for climate engineering; even though the concept has been expressed,
as the following book excerpt states:[1]
Geoengineering: Sulfur as Savior?
A tone of desperation is palpable in climate-change science when well-known
people seriously propose that filling the stratosphere with sulfur dioxide
may be the only way to stop run-away greenhouse warming. Do we really want
to pump the stratosphere full of sulfur to shroud the surface from warmth,
then live in a perpetual acid mist? Paul J. Crutzen of the Max Planck
Institute for Chemistry in Germany, who won a Nobel Prize in 1995 for
showing how industrial gases damage the Earth's ozone shield, advanced the
idea anew in 2006, citing the "grossly disappointing international
political response" to increasing evidence of global warming (Kerr 2006d,
401).
"We should treat these ideas like any other research and get into the
mind-set of taking them seriously," said Ralph J. Cicerone, president of
the National Academy of Sciences (Broad 2006). Most of these proposals
involve geoengineering, large-scale rearranging of the Earth's environment
to suit human needs. This idea "should not be taken as a license to go out
and pollute," Cicerone said, emphasizing that most scientists believe that
reducing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere should be the top priority. He
added, however, that "Pin my opinion, he [Crutzen] has written a brilliant
paper" (Broad 2006). Wallace S. Broecker, a geoengineering pioneer at
Columbia University, also has proposed spreading tons of sulfur dioxide
into the stratosphere, as erupting volcanoes occasionally do. The
injections, he calculated in the 1980s, would require a fleet of hundreds
of jumbo jets and, as a by-product, would increase acid rain (Broad 2006).
In a draft of his paper, Crutzen estimated the annual cost of his sulfur
proposal at up to $50 billion, or about 5 percent of the world's annual
military spending. "Climatic engineering, such as presented here, is the
only option available to rapidly reduce temperature rises" if international
efforts fail to curb greenhouse gases, Crutzen wrote. "So far," he added,
"there is little reason to be optimistic" (Broad 2006). Supporters of this
idea contend that any increase in sulfur at the Earth's surface would be
small compared with the tons already being emitted from the smokestacks of
coal-fueled plants (Broad 2006). Another proposed solution along the same
lines involves the burning of sulfur in ships and power plants to form
sulfate aerosols.
The possibility of this type of tropospheric geoengineering “unintended” or
otherwise, has also been raised most recently by Oliver Morton in his
book The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could Change the World:[2]
But some of the mid-ocean sulphur comes from ships, and thus so does some
planetary cooling. It has been calculated that the new emission standards
the IMO is bringing into force this decade will reduce the cooling effects
of global pollution by something like a third of a watt per square metre –
a considerably greater effect, models would suggest, than that of all the
carbon dioxide emitted by every generator and engine in the world over the
same ten years. Those new standards will also, according to a companion
analysis, save something in the region of 40,000 lives a year, because what
is emitted over the mid-oceans does not stay over the mid-oceans; it is
blown to shore, where it increases the damage done by pollution to
susceptible lungs.
Do I think it realistic to imagine that the IMO might, as the result of a
far-reaching envelope-stretching boundary-breaking debate, have come to a
Crutzen-like grand bargain in which it sought to make good the cooling it
was taking away by implementing a replacement brightening? Not really; but
it remains striking – no, shocking – that as far as I can ascertain no one
even mentioned the matter, even though the IMO’s own technical advisers
used the term ‘geoengineering’ in some of their analyses.Conversations have
to start somewhere, and that would have been a good place to start one.
An even more recent, presentation by Chuck Long from the US National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration NOAA, at the 2015 fall meeting of
the American Geophysical Union AGU, titled “A23K-04: Evidence of Clear-Sky
Daylight Whitening: Are we already conducting geoengineering?”.[3] The
presentation focused on the direct and indirect effects of aviation
aerosols seems, in my view, to strengthen the concept of “Tropospheric
Sulfur Injection as (unintended) geoengineering”. The presentation abstract
reads:
Long et al. (2009, JGR 114) analyzed surface radiation data spanning 1995
through 2007 from several ARM and six SURFRAD sites across the continental
US, and showed an average 8 Wm-2/decade brightening in all-sky downwelling
SW. The study also showed a 5 Wm-2/decade increase in the clear-sky
downwelling SW, an expected result of decreasing aerosol optical depths
during the same time period (Augustine et al., 2008, JGR 113). However, the
unexpected result of the Long et al. study is that the 5 Wm-2/decade
increase occurred in the diffuse SW, while the direct SW remained virtually
unchanged...opposite what is expected for aerosol direct effect due to
decreases in aerosols. With detailed radiative transfer modeling and
correlation with US FAA commercial flight hours through the same years,
Long et al. suggested that while the decreased aerosols did increase the
total SW, an increase in high, sub-visual contrail-generated ice haze
repartitioned the increase into the diffuse SW component through large-mode
particle scattering.
Subsequent attempts to investigate the veracity of this speculation using
long time series of ARM Micropulse and Raman lidars data proved untenable
due to instrument limitations and continuity issues. However, similar to
using the red/blue ratio of pixel color amounts in processing color sky
images to infer clouds, we have used clear-sky diffuse SW irradiance
measurements from the Multi-Frequency Rotating Shadowband Radiometer
(MFRSR) 870, 500, and 415 nm spectral channels to look at any possible
trends suggesting "whitening" of the cloud-free skies over the ARM SGP
site. We will present our preliminary findings to date of these
investigations suggesting indeed that there has been an aggregate
"whitening" of the sky conditions we typically consider to be "cloud free."
Augustine, J.A., G.B.Hodges, E.G.Dutton, J.J. Michalsky, and C.R.Cornwall
(2008), An aerosol optical depth climatology for NOAA’s national surface
radiation budget network (SURFRAD), J. Geophys. Res., 113, D11204,
doi:10.1029/2007JD009504.
Long, C. N., E. G. Dutton, J. A. Augustine, W. Wiscombe, M. Wild, S. A.
McFarlane, and C. J. Flynn (2009): Significant Decadal Brightening of
Downwelling Shortwave in the Continental US, JGR, 114, D00D06,
doi:10.1029/2008JD011263.
This presentation garnered what seems to be very limited press
coverage,[4] and virtually nonexistent reaction from civil society and
environmental activists. Strange… given the controversial and pugnacious
nature of the various debates surrounding the topic of geoengineering,
particularly when it refers to climate justice, environmental concerns and
moral hazard issues.
A short online debate has been documented in the ‘Geoengineering Google
Group’,[5] mostly centering on the definition of geoengineering, and
whether or not the known effects of human industrial emissions could
represent geoengineering. Chuck long is quoted:[6]
“Chuck Long, from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
(Noaa), said that if his thinking was correct then what was occurring was
an example of "accidental geoengineering".
"If you look up the definition of geoengineering, it includes large-scale
manipulation of parts of the climate system or the environment, and I
believe this ice haze from jet traffic does satisfy that requirement," he
told reporters.”
On January 19, 2016, Slate magazine in partnership with New America, and
Arizona State University on emerging technologies, public policy, and
society; conducted a short online forum titled “These 2 Experts Will Answer
Your Burning Geoengineering Questions”.[7] The two experts were Jeff
Goodell a “contributing editor at Rolling Stone, a fellow at New America,
and the author of How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious
Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate.” And “Raymond T. Pierrehumbert, who is the
Halley professor of physics at the University of Oxford and has called
geoengineering “barking mad.””
Here is the question I submitted and the answer by Raymond T. Pierrehumbert:
Question: How is the geoengineering debate impacted, in terms of climate
justice, environment, moral hazard and research, by the following two
facts? 1) A recent presentation by Chuck Long at the American Geophysical
Union fall meeting argues that aviation emissions has been responsible for
a form of ongoing SRM "accidental geoengineering." 2) Current anthropogenic
annual sulfur emission are higher than five times the sulfur emitted by Mt.
Pinatubo in 1991, and are currently emitted mostly in the Northern
Hemisphere, with 98 vs. 6 Tg S year.
Pierrehumbert: This isn’t “geoengineering.” These sort of effects are no
different from other inadvertent things we do that affect the climate,
including both greenhouse gas emissions, and emissions of sulfate pollution
that form reflecting droplets in the atmosphere (aerosols). These are
by-products of things we want to do (like fly, burn coal, etc.).
Geoengineering, (or better “climate intervention”) is reserved for the case
where the climate effect is not an inadvertent by-product, but rather the
aim itself. By the way, sulfur dioxide injection is what’s proposed for
albedo hacking that is done in the stratosphere, but the amount you’d need
to inject over the ocean surface to cause a significant cloud change there
makes even the geoengineering boosters blanche. For that reason, the
proposals for low-level cloud modification generally involve sea-salt
rather than sulfur dioxide. Still a bad idea, but we have to keep the
actual scientific facts straight.
Speaking of blanching… I had included this reference to the “98 vs. 6 Tg S
year” figures in my question, but it was omitted from the published version:
Approaches to Observe Anthropogenic Aerosol-Cloud Interactions, Johannes
Quaas, 2015.[8]
Although Mr. Pierrehumbert’s answer is very interesting. It does not
resonate with me particularly because his statement “By the way, sulfur
dioxide injection is what’s proposed for albedo hacking that is done in the
stratosphere” may not be entirely accurate, as I have documented. But to
the question of whether we are geoengineering or not, the best answer I
have seen so far is the following:
“The question about geoengineering was interesting to me, because in some
ways none of us would be here if in fact we weren’t already geoengineering
this planet, that is the whole reason we are worried about it. The fact
that we may have not intended to do it, the fact that we didn’t think about
it rationally, ethically, nor was it part of our design; that is relatively
immaterial from the point of view of the systems involved in the planet.
It’s a geoengineered planet.”[9] Brad R. Allenby
Coming back to the original title of this article, “Tropospheric Sulfur
Emission Geoengineering. A Conjecture”, I think that it would be helpful to
investigate what proper scientific proposals of that sort may look like. I
imagine some may not be too different from what “we” are currently doing
trough global aviation and shipping emissions. But that may also bring some
very uncomfortable epiphanies. No doubt a strong reason for some to
continue to prefer barking mad ignorance.
And just in case… do I think deploying climate geoengineering is a good
idea, and the only way to sustainable growth? No, particularly because I
believe there are economic and energy alternatives to the fossil fuel
economy that do not include ‘degrowth’!
But nevertheless one of the safest ways to know is… knowledge trough
research.
Update:
A free acces model study about tropospheric("In the set of model
experiments considered here, we directly inject sulfate aerosols at a
single model level at 12.1 km") emissions as geoengineering. Follow the
link for the full study in pdf:
Could aerosol emissions be used for regional heat wave mitigation?
http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/13/6373/2013/acp-13-6373-2013.pdf
D. N. Bernstein1,2, J. D. Neelin2, Q. B. Li2, and D. Chen21Department of
Soil and Water Sciences, Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and
Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, POB 12, Rehovot 76100,
Israel
2Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences, University of California,
Los Angeles, 405 Hilgard Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90095,
USAdoi:10.5194/acp-13-6373-2013Abstract. Geoengineering applications by
injection of sulfate aerosols into the stratosphere are under consideration
as a measure of last resort to counter global warming. Here a potential
regional-scale application to offset the impacts of heat waves is
critically examined. Using the Weather Research and Forecasting model with
fully coupled chemistry (WRF-Chem), the effect of regional-scale sulfate
aerosol emission over California in each of two days of the July 2006 heat
wave is used to quantify potential reductions in surface temperature as a
function of emission rates in a layer at 12 km altitude. Local
meteorological factors yield geographical differences in surface air
temperature sensitivity. For emission rates of approximately 30 μg
m−2 s−1 of sulfate aerosols (with standard WRF-Chem size distribution) over
the region, temperature decreases of around 7 °C result during the middle
part of the day over the Central Valley, one of the areas hardest hit by
the heat wave. Regions more ventilated with oceanic air such as Los Angeles
have slightly smaller reductions. The length of the hottest part of the day
is also reduced. Advection effects on the aerosol cloud must be more
carefully forecast for smaller injection regions. Verification of the
impacts could be done via measurements of differences in reflected and
surface downward shortwave. Such regional geoengineering applications with
specific near-term target effects but smaller cost and side effects could
potentially provide a means of testing larger scale applications. However,
design considerations for regional applications, such as a preference for
injection at a level of relatively low wind speed, differ from those for
global applications. The size of the required injections and the necessity
of injection close to the target region raise substantial concerns. The
evaluation of this regional-scale application is thus consistent with
global model evaluations, emphasizing that mitigation via reduction of
fossil fuels remains preferable to considering geoengineering with sulfate
aerosols.
[1] Johansen, Bruce E., (2009-11-03) The Encyclopedia of Global Warming
Science and Technology (Pg 270-271), Greenwood.
[2] Morton, Oliver (2015-11-03) The Planet Remade: How Geoengineering Could
Change the World (p. 296), Princeton University Press. Google Play, U.S.
Edition.
[3] AGU Fall Meeting, 2015, A23K-04: Evidence of Clear-Sky Daylight
Whitening: Are we already conducting geoengineering? - Retrieved online on
January 21, 2016 from
https://agu.confex.com/agu/fm15/meetingapp.cgi/Paper/59257
[4] Kiel, 2015 December 26, [press review] Media responses to Charles Long
on "Unintentional Geoengineering" - Retrieved online on January 21, 2016
from
http://www.climate-engineering.eu/single/items/press-review-media-responses-to-charles-long-on-unintentional-geoengineering.html
[5] Rau, G. (2015, December 16) "Accidental" Geoengineering? [Blog topic]
Retrieved online January 21, 2016 from
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/geoengineering/2AASwDEgumg
[6] Amos Jonathan, 2015 December 16, Jet traffic linked to ice haze,
Retrieved online on January 21, 2016 from
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35109198
[7] Slate (2015 January 19) These Two Experts Answered Your Burning
Geoengineering Questions, Retrieved online on January 21, 2016 from
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2016/01/jeff_goodell_and_raymond_t_pierrehumbert_take_questions_about_geoengineering.html
[8] Quaas, J. (2015) Approaches to Observe Anthropogenic Aerosol-Cloud
Interactions. Springer Link. Retrieved online on January 21, 2016 from
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40641-015-0028-0/fulltext.html
[9] Allenby, B. R. (2007, October 9) Earth Systems Engineering and
Management, MIT Video. Retrieved online on July 7, 2013 from
http://video.mit.edu/watch/earth-systems-engineering-and-management-9306/
Oscar Escobar a la/s 2:36 PM
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