Latest Research

28 April 2015 Whitening the Arctic Ocean: May restore sea ice, but not climate

IPCC Arctic climate catastrophe references

Peter Wadhams Nov 2012 Only geo-engineering can save the sea ice now,

Wikipedia Arctic geoengineering

This page offers articles and papers on what is called geoengineering. A more accurate term would be detoxifying the biosphere. It would in fact be re-geoengineering because the chemistry of the atmosphere and of the oceans has already been changed to such such a degree that the biosphere is in an unprecedented no analog state (IGBP 2006).

Though civil society is strongly united on stopping any consideration of geo-engieeriong, we have geo-engineered our planet practically to death. The evidence is that planetary catastrophe is our future without drastic intervention. The safest intervention to trry would be to stabilize/restore Arctic alvbedo (snow and Summer sea ice.

Intuitively the first way to do that would be some way of whitening the surface of the open Arctic ocean. There are methods being investigated, but the latest research (April 2015) indicates it would not help much, even if there were a tecnology to do it.

That leaves airborne Arctic regional aerosol cooling, which should certainly work, and looks like the safest thing to try, to prevent Arctic feedback climate change runaway.

The radiative forcing potential of different climate geoengineering options
T. M. Lenton and N. E. Vaughan 2009

The case for at least the rapid development of a planetary climate catastrophe emergency-preparedness capacity is definite. The 2007 IPCC assessment confirms that Arctic feedback global climate catastrophe is possible. On the current world fossil fuel energy economy (tracking the worst case IPCC scenario), climate catastrophe is certain. On today's global warming and climate change commitment, it is definite. We must get below 350 ppm of atmospheric CO2, which is impossible without intervention. (Geoengineering: The Inescapable Truth of Getting to 350, Chuck Greene, Professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University; Bruce Monger, Senior Research Associate in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University; Mark Huntley, Chief Technology and Science Officer of Cellana)

A big concern is what effect would cooling have on world food crops. There is nothing to suggest that regional Arctic cooling would be damaging to food production. 2012 research Crop yields in a geoengineered climate indicated food production on balance would benefit if global cooling had to be resorted.

The ‘Geo-Engineering’ Scenario: Why even a desperate measure is starting to look reasonable.
James R. Fleming, Professor of Science, Technology, and society

THE BENEFITS, RISKS, AND COSTS OF STRATOSPHERIC GEOENGINEERING, 2009
Alan Robock, Allison Marquardt, Ben Kravitz, and Georgiy Stenchikov
Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA

The Effects of Stratospheric Geoengineering on Regional Climate
Alan Robock, Department of Environmental Sciences, Rutgers University,

Study of Long-term Effect of Stratospheric Geoengineering on Climate Characteristics
Georgiy Stenchikov, 2011

Geoengineering the Climate: Combining CO2 reduction and solar radiation management
Australian Academy of Science Symposium, September 26-27, 2011

Tom Wigley, National Center for Atmospheric Research,USA and University of Adelaide,

This is a comprehensive slide presentation of the situation for intervention and the options, by one of the world's top experts on climate change.

The 2009 Royal Society report Geoengineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty recommends:
 

• Parties to the UNFCCC should make increased efforts towards mitigating and adapting to climate change and in particular to agreeing to global emissions reductions of at least 50% on 1990 levels by 2050 and more thereafter;
• CDR [carbon dioxide removal] and SRM [solar radiation management] geoengineering methods should only be considered as part of a wider package of options for addressing climate change. CDR methods should be regarded as preferable to SRM methods.
• Relevant UK government departments, in association with the UK Research Councils, should together fund a 10 year geoengineering research programme at a level of the order of £10M per annum.
• The Royal Society, in collaboration with international science partners, should develop a code of practice for geoengineering research and provide recommendations to the international scientific community for a voluntary research governance framework.

A 2010 Royal Society report offers a benign cooling option Cooling the World with Crops.
This would provide regional summer cooling (Europe) of 1ºC.

The next IPCC assessment plans to have a section on geoengineering. In 2011 the IPCC held an expert geoengineering workshop in Peru, which was an overview of geoengineering in the context of assessment, science, technology, policy and governance.