Simply reducing greenhouse gas emissions probably is not going to be sufficient for the planet to escape catastrophic damage from climate change, scientists say.
Simply reducing greenhouse gas emissions probably is not going to be sufficient for the planet to escape catastrophic damage from climate change, scientists say.
Additional actions will be required, and one option is solar geoengineering, which could lower temperatures by methods such as reflecting sunlight away from the Earth through the deployment of aerosols in the stratosphere. However, the prospect of experimenting with the Earth’s atmosphere has left some people skeptical, and some outright scared, of the process.
A new study, “Mission-Driven Research for Stratospheric Aerosol Geoengineering,” published Jan. 7 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, sets out to establish a roadmap for responsible exploration of geoengineering.
“Part of the genesis of this paper is that a long time ago I got tired of going to meetings and not being able to say much more than, ‘If you do geoengineering, it will get colder,’” said lead author Douglas MacMartin, senior research associate and senior lecturer in mechanical and aerospace engineering.
Read more at Cornell University
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