Artificial volcanoes could cool the earth
Spewing Tons Of Sulphur-Based Particles Into Upper Atmosphere Could Help Curb Warming
Updated On: 9/2/2009 [Total Votes: 40, Hits: 411] Print

The Royal Society is backing research into simulated volcanic eruptions, spraying millions of tons of dust into the air, in an attempt to stave off climate change.

The society will this week call for a global programme of studies into geo-engineering — the manipulation of the Earth’s climate to counteract global warming — as the world struggles to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It will suggest in a report that pouring sulphur-based particles into the upper atmosphere could be one of the few options available to humanity to keep the world cool.

The intervention by the Royal Society comes amid tension ahead of the United Nationssponsored climate talks in Copenhagen in December to agree global cuts in carbon dioxide emissions.

Preliminary discussions have gone so badly that many scientists believe geo-engineering will be needed as a “plan B”.

Ken Caldeira, an earth scientist at Stanford University, California and a member of a Royal Society working group on geo engineering, said dust sprayed into the stratosphere in volcanic eruptions was known to cool the Earth by reflecting light back into space. “If I had a dollar for geo-engineering research I would put 90 cents of it into stratospheric aerosols and 10 cents into everything else,” said Caldeira.

The interest in so-called aerosols is linked to the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991, the second largest volcanic eruption of the 20th century. The explosion blasted up to 20m tons of tiny sulphur particles into the air, cooling the planet by about 0.5°C before they fell back to Earth.

The Royal Society is Britain’s premier science institution and its decision to take geo engineering seriously is a measure of the desperation felt by scientists about climate change.

Brian Launder, a professor at Manchester University, who is also on the working group, recently said that without CO2 reductions or geo-engineering “civilization as we know it will end within our grand children’s lifetime”. “The only rational scheme is to reduce the sunlight reaching Earth and to reflect back more of it,” he said.

The world’s population generates the equivalent of 50billion tons of CO2 a year, a figure which is projected to reach 60-70billion tons by 2030 on current trends. Scientists warn that the planet could warm by 5C by 2100 and say emissions must fall to 20billion tons a year by 2050 if a disaster is to be averted.

However, many researchers and policymakers regard this target as impossible. The Royal Society report is expected to draw partly on research by Tim Lenton, professor of earth sciences at the University of East Anglia, who has just completed the first big comparison of different forms of geo-engineering.

“We estimate that 1.5-5m tons of sulphate particles could be released (artificially) into the stratosphere each year on a recurring basis,” said Lenton.

“This is quite a small amount, which makes it potentially economically viable, but it could reduce global temperature rise by up to 2C.”
The study investigates several other proposals for geo-engineering, dividing them into two broad approaches. One approach involves reducing the sunlight reaching the Earth’s surface — a premise that lies behind both aerosol release and the construction of mirrors in space. Lenton regards the latter idea as “science fiction”, pointing out that any space sunshade would need a surface area of 1.8m square miles to be effective.

Another suggestion for cutting the light reaching the Earth is cloud-whitening, where salt water is sprayed into the air from thousands of ships, producing brighter clouds. However, the Met Office has attacked this idea in its submission to the Royal Society, warning that it could cut rainfall in areas such as the Amazon and Africa.

The other main approach to geo-engineering is to try to accelerate the rate at which CO2 is removed from the air by plants and ocean plankton, or through chemicals.

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