Irvine, PJ;
Keith, DW;
(2020)
Halving warming with stratospheric aerosol geoengineering moderates policy-relevant climate hazards.
Environmental Research Letters
, 15
(4)
, Article 044011. 10.1088/1748-9326/ab76de.
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Abstract
Stratospheric aerosol geoengineering is a proposal to artificially thicken the layer of reflective aerosols in the stratosphere and it is hoped that this may offer a means of reducing average climate changes. However, previous work has shown that it could not perfectly offset the effects of climate change and there is a concern that it may worsen climate impacts in some regions. One approach to evaluating this concern is to test whether the absolute magnitude of climate change at each location is significantly increased (exacerbated) or decreased (moderated) relative to the period just preceding deployment. In prior work it was found that halving warming with an idealized solar constant reduction would substantially reduce climate change overall, exacerbating change in a small fraction of places. Here, we test if this result holds for a more realistic representation of stratospheric aerosol geoengineering using the data from the geoengineering large ensemble (GLENS). Using a linearized scaling of GLENS we find that halving warming with stratospheric aerosols moderates important climate hazards in almost all regions. Only 1.3% of land area sees exacerbation of change in water availability, and regions that are exacerbated see wetting not drying contradicting the common assumption that solar geoengineering leads to drying in general. These results suggest that halving warming with stratospheric aerosol geoengineering could potentially reduce key climate hazards substantially while avoiding some problems associated with fully offsetting warming.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Halving warming with stratospheric aerosol geoengineering moderates policy-relevant climate hazards |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1088/1748-9326/ab76de |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab76de |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2020 IOP Publishing. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0). |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Earth Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10094203 |
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