The dynamics that lift smoke from large wildfires into the upper atmosphere could potentially be employed one day to help temporarily cool the planet, based on the findings of a modeling study led by NOAA scientists.
Inspired by a giant fire cloud generated over the Pacific Northwest in 2017, the author team investigated whether heat from the sun could loft light-reflecting material mixed with heat-absorbing particles several miles into the stratosphere from lower altitudes. Once in the stratosphere, the reflective material would dim sunlight and cool the planet below. A description of the process, called solar-powered lofting, was published in the journal Science Advances.
The NOAA-led team, which also includes scientists from CIRES, NCAR, the University of Colorado, the German Aerospace Center, and Jinan University in China, used the NCAR Community Earth System Model to simulate solar-powered lofting in order to calculate the amount of light-absorbing black carbon particles required to effect substantial lofting. The suitability of the model was demonstrated by successfully reproducing the lofting in the 2017 Pacific Northwest fire plume.
“Greenhouse gases continue to increase, and there is concern that at some point the Earth system will reach a tipping point that it can't return from,” said Karen Rosenlof, a researcher with NOAA’s Chemical Sciences Laboratory and one of two lead authors of the new paper.
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