Regional deployment of marine cloud brightening off the U.S. West Coast would be far less effective in the warmer world of 2050, and if implemented, could unleash higher temperatures in Europe and other regions, warns recent research. The June 2024 modeling study of the controversial geoengineering technique shows “that a regional intervention will have large scale implications. So even though you’re applying [MCB] in a smaller space, the impacts [end up being] global,” says Jessica Wan, first author on the paper and a climate sciences Ph.D. candidate at California’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Marine cloud brightening is a form of solar radiation management. According to the theory, spraying sea salt aerosols, or other tiny particles, into clouds over the world’s oceans could make those clouds brighter, reflecting more of the sun’s rays back into space and leading to a cooling effect on the Earth below. MCB is viewed as a geoengineering technology that could buy time, while the world drastically slashes its carbon emissions, and as a “painkiller” to ward off the worst impacts of greenhouse gas-induced warming, while those deep cuts are made. But MCB experimentation and implementation are highly controversial, with opponents calling for an outright ban on marine geoengineering technologies, which they describe as a “dangerous distraction” from tackling climate change emission reductions. Others argue MCB research is needed now to keep all options on the table, in case aggressive carbon-cutting measures fail to quickly materialize. Adding to the debate, experts warn of the risk posed by…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Article by:
This story first appeared on Mongabay
South Africa Today – Environment
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
You may republish this article, so long as you credit the authors and Mongabay, and do not change the text. Please include a link back to the original article.
