Assessing Responses and Impacts of Solar climate intervention on the Earth system with stratospheric aerosol injection (ARISE-SAI)
- 1Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder CO
- 2Sibley School for Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
- 1Climate and Global Dynamics Laboratory, National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder CO
- 2Sibley School for Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca NY
Abstract. Solar climate intervention using stratospheric aerosol injection is a proposed method of reducing global mean temperatures to reduce some of the consequences of climate change. A detailed assessment of responses and impacts of such an intervention is needed with multiple global models to support societal decisions regarding the use of these approaches to help address climate change. We present here a new modeling protocol and a 10-member ensemble of simulations using one of the most comprehensive Earth system models, aimed at simulating a plausible deployment of stratospheric aerosol injection and reproducibility of simulations using other Earth system models to enable community assessment of responses of the Earth system to solar climate intervention. The Assessing Responses and Impacts of Solar climate intervention on the Earth system with stratospheric aerosol injection (ARISE-SAI) simulations utilize a moderate emission scenario, introduce stratospheric aerosol injection at ~ 21 km in year 2035, and keep global mean surface air temperature near 1.5 °C above the pre-industrial value (ARISE-SAI-1.5). We present here the detailed set-up, aerosol injection strategy, and mean surface climate changes in these simulations so they can be reproduced in other global models.
Jadwiga Richter et al.
Status: open (until 22 Jun 2022)
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CC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2022-125', Richard Rosen, 26 Apr 2022
reply
My first concern about this paper is that it does not discuss seasonal impacts on temperature and precipitation as a function of latitude at all. This must be done. For example, we know that the annual average temperature impacts of climate change on annual average temperature occur most in the high northern latitudes, in places like Alaska. Furthermore, in theory, having more CO2 in the atmosphere over such regions clearly has a huge impact in reducing radiative cooling in winter, thus increasing surface temperatures substantially. Yet, having sulfate particles over Alaska in winter won't have much impact in reducing temperatures since the periods of sunlight are so short. Furthermore, having most of the sulfate particulates much farther south, as shown in Figure 2, would seem to imply that incoming summer radiation will not be reflected very much in the far north were it is needed to be reflected during the long daytimes of summer to cool the air. Similar seasonal assymetries are probably important for precipitation impacts of climate change even though these would be much harder to model accurately. The seasonal assymetries with regard to surface temperature seem to derive much more simply from the physics of CO2 concentrations and the density of sulfate particles in the air. Thus, concluding that "on average" over the year or over many years solar geoengineering can mitigate climate change is not very helpful when trying to analyze the impact of climate change on human society and the ecology. Seasonal and time of day (day vs. night) differences in impact on temperature and precipitation are very important to consider.
My second concern is that I do not quickly see any discussion of how the impact of sulfate particles on the reflectivity of solar radiation is modelled at different wavelengths, and at different times of the day. Also, I do not see any discussion of the impact of continually falling particles have on air quality, human beings breathing the air, and on ecology and agriculture.
Jadwiga Richter et al.
Data sets
ARISE-SAI-1.5 Jadwiga H. Richter, Daniel Visioni, Douglas G. MacMartin, David A. Bailey https://zenodo.org/record/6473775#.YmCAdy-B3qA
CESM2(WACCM6) SSP2-4.5 Simulations Michael Mills, Jadwiga Richter, David A. Bailey, Daniel Visioni https://zenodo.org/record/6473954#.YmCAwy-B3qA
Model code and software
SO2 Injection Controller Algorithm Daniel Visioni, Doug MacMartin, Ben Kravitz https://zenodo.org/record/6471092#.YmFzli-B3qB
Scripts to produce simulations Nan Rosenbloom, Daniel Visioni, Jadwiga H. Richter https://zenodo.org/record/6474201
Jadwiga Richter et al.
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