It’s a tempting thought: With climate change so difficult to manage and nations unwilling to take decisive action, what if we could mitigate its effects by setting up a kind of chemical umbrella—a layer of sulfuric acid in the upper atmosphere that could reflect the sun’s radiation and cool the Earth?
It’s a tempting thought: With climate change so difficult to manage and nations unwilling to take decisive action, what if we could mitigate its effects by setting up a kind of chemical umbrella—a layer of sulfuric acid in the upper atmosphere that could reflect the sun’s radiation and cool the Earth?
According to a new study in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, a collaboration among Penn scientists and two groups in Spain, atmospheric conditions in the stratosphere pose a challenge to generating sulfuric acid, making its production less efficient than might have previously been expected. Thus more groundwork exploring the chemistry of how sulfuric acid and its building blocks will react in the upper atmosphere is required in order to confidently move forward with this climate geoengineering strategy, the researchers say.
“These fundamental insights highlight the importance of understanding the photochemistry involved in geoengineering,” says Joseph S. Francisco, an atmospheric chemist in Penn’s School of Arts & Sciences and a co-corresponding author on the study. “That’s critically important and it’s something that’s been ignored.”
Read more at: University of Pennsylvania
Some scientists have proposed planetary-scale solutions to address climate change, such as geoengineering using sulfur compounds to create a sunshield in the upper atmosphere. New research suggests there’s a good deal more chemistry to understand before proceeding. (Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Francisco laboratory)
