Monat: August 2015

Harvard Political Review: Engineering The Climate

„In early July, in Germany’s historic Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities, academics and analysts from a wide range of disciplines gathered to participate in a research symposium on climate engineering. The fledgling field—only some of those present at the conference even consider climate engineering to be their primary research interest—has steadily been picking up momentum over the past decade.“

Link

Mengis, N.; et al. (2015): Uncertainty in the response of transpiration to CO2 and implications for climate change

Mengis, Nadine; Keller, David P.; Eby, M.; Oschlies, Andreas (2015): Uncertainty in the response of transpiration to CO2 and implications for climate change. In Environ. Res. Lett. 10 (9), p. 94001–94001. DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/10/9/094001

Paper from PP 1689. „To assess the impact of this uncertainty on future climate, we perform experiments with an intermediate complexity Earth System Climate Model (UVic ESCM) for a range of model-imposed transpiration-sensitivities to CO2. Changing the sensitivity of transpiration to CO2 causes simulated terrestrial precipitation to change by −10% to +27% by 2100 under a high emission scenario. This study emphasises the importance of an improved assessment of the dynamics of environmental impact on vegetation to better predict future changes of the terrestrial hydrological and carbon cycles.“

Link

Bellamy, R.; Lezaun, J. (2015): Crafting a public for geoengineering

Bellamy, R.; Lezaun, J. (2015): Crafting a public for geoengineering. In Public Understanding of Science. DOI 10.1177/0963662515600965[nbsp]

„Here, we analyse this rapid trajectory of publicization and explore the particular manner in which the possibility of intentionally altering the Earth’s climate system to curb global warming has been incorporated into the field of ‘public engagement with science’. We describe the initial framing of geoengineering as a singular object of debate and subsequent attempts to ‘unframe’ the issue by placing it within broader discursive fields.“

Link

V. N. Aswathy; et al. (2015): Climate extremes in multi-model simulations of stratospheric aerosol and marine cloud brightening climate engineering

V. N. Aswathy; Boucher, O.; Quaas, M.; Niemeier, U.; Muri, H.; Mülmenstädt, J.; Quaas, J. (2015): Climate extremes in multi-model simulations of stratospheric aerosol and marine cloud brightening climate engineering. In Atmos. Chem. Phys. 15 (16), pp. 9593–9610. DOI 10.5194/acp-15-9593-2015 (final paper)

Simulations from a multi-model ensemble for the RCP4.5 climate change scenario for the 21st century, and for two solar radiation management (SRM) schemes (stratospheric sulfate injection (G3), SULF and marine cloud brightening by sea salt emission SALT) have been analysed in terms of changes in the mean and extremes of surface air temperature and precipitation. The climate engineering and termination periods are investigated. During the climate engineering period, both schemes, as intended, offset temperature increases by about 60 % globally, but are more effective in the low latitudes and exhibit some residual warming in the Arctic (especially in the case of SALT which is only applied in the low latitudes).

Link

Sánchez, Joan-Pau; McInnes, Colin R. (2015): Optimal Sunshade Configurations for Space-Based Geoengineering near the Sun-Earth L1 Point

Sánchez, Joan-Pau; McInnes, Colin R. (2015): Optimal Sunshade Configurations for Space-Based Geoengineering near the Sun-Earth L1 Point. In PloS one 10 (8), pp. e0136648. DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0136648[nbsp][nbsp]

„In particular, the paper revisits the concept of deploying a large sunshade or occulting disk at a static position near the Sun-Earth L1 Lagrange equilibrium point. Among the solar radiation management methods that have been proposed thus far, space-based concepts are generally seen as the least timely, albeit also as one of the most efficient.“

Link

Project: Mechanism and Impacts of Geoengineering (China)

New project in China.

„In light of the difficulties in achieving emission control,[nbsp]serious consequences of „business as usual“[nbsp](Fig. 2) and urgency of approaching climatic ‘tipping point’, SRM seems to be the only feasible option mitigating global warming in a short time (Fig. 3), but the uncertainty of basic mechanism and potential impacts of SRM are so huge, that we absolutely can’t do any experiment on our real planet, instead we use computer modeling as our only way to improve our understanding of geoengineering.“

Link

Kruger, Tim (2015): Dimensions of Geoengineering: An Analysis of the Royal Societys Blob Diagram

Kruger, Tim (2015): Dimensions of Geoengineering: An Analysis of the Royal Society’s ‚Blob‘ Diagram (CGG Working Papers, 26).

„The Royal Society’s 2009 report “Geoengineering the climate: Science, governance and uncertainty” is seen as a key reference on the subject of geoengineering and one of the diagrams which depicts a preliminary evaluation of the range of proposed techniques is one of the most remarked upon pieces of the report. For many, it presents a useful synthesis of the analysis that went into the report. For others, however, the diagram is problematic. This paper unpacks some of the diagram’s limitations.“

Link (pdf)