The UK government’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency – known as Aria – recently announced it is funding 21 research teams to explore what it terms climate cooling. The money involved (£56 million) isn’t much in the grand scheme of things. But experts on both sides of the debate (and this issue divides climate academics more than almost any other) agree it’s likely to be a precursor to more significant investment in future.
To refresh, “geoengineering” refers to any large-scale moves to deliberately alter the climate to combat global warming. This could involve removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, perhaps with huge vacuum-like machines (that still don’t really exist) or, more prosaically, by growing more trees. Some experts would consider planting a forest or restoring a wetland as a form of geoengineering.
But today we’re focusing on the other main category of geoengineering, known as “solar radiation management,” or SRM. The idea here is to ensure that more sunlight is reflected back into space before it can heat up the planet.
What makes the new UK investment so important, says Robert Chris, is it’s the first time a state has put significant public money into researching solar radiation management. Chris, who researches geoengineering at The Open University, highlighted five projects (of the 21 total) which are likely to involve small-scale experiments:
“Three … concern brightening clouds over the ocean, one explores a method of refreezing the Arctic and the fifth looks at a specific detail of the potential cooling effect of placing certain compounds in the stratosphere.”
Marine Brightening
Let’s start with the brighter clouds.
“We’re using water cannons to spray seawater into the sky. This causes brighter, whiter clouds to form. These low marine clouds reflect sunlight away from the ocean’s surface.”
That’s Daniel Harrison of Southern Cross University in Australia, writing in late 2023 about his research. He’s now been awarded UK government money to continue his work, looking specifically at whether brightening clouds directly over the Great Barrier Reef for a few months could reduce coral bleaching during a marine heat wave.
“Modeling studies are encouraging and suggest it could delay the expected decline in coral cover. This could buy valuable time for the reef while the world transitions away from fossil fuels.”
The UK funding will enable Harrison to extend his work and assess if it can be safe and effective, albeit only as a temporary measure specifically targeted at the Great Barrier Reef.
The other two cloud brightening projects, run from the universities of Manchester and Nottingham, are looking at developing better ways to seed clouds in the first place.
Arctic Refreezing
The Arctic refreezing project is run by Shaun Fitzgerald of the University of Cambridge, and focuses on sea ice. The idea is to pump sea water from below the ice onto its surface in the winter, where it freezes. This means there will be more ice accumulated ahead of the summer melting season, meaning more of the sun’s energy reflected back into space (ice is more reflective than open ocean).
Fitzgerald recently returned from fieldwork in northern Canada and wrote about his work for The Conversation. “Crucially,” he said, “the research is focused on developing our understanding of these potential ideas. The research could show that they are impractical, unfeasible or would potentially make things worse.” For instance, he points out that thicker ice “may not be much use” if it is so much saltier that it melts more quickly. He describes initial results – before the government funding – as “inconclusive but encouraging.”
Blocking Out The Sun
The final project Chris highlights looks at one aspect of proposals to inject tiny particles high in the atmosphere where they would help reflect sunlight back into space. This is probably the most likely to happen, eventually, as it’s relatively cheap and well-studied.
One risk concerns the health and environmental impact of these particles as they fall back to the surface. Hugh Hunt, also from Cambridge, has been awarded funds to examine alternative compounds that may be less toxic than those usually proposed.
Chris writes: “The plan is to send tiny samples into the stratosphere in specially designed gondolas attached to balloons. The gondolas will later be recovered, so that the effect of the stratosphere on the samples can be examined. Nothing will be released into the atmosphere.”
Researchers in this field are generally quick to point out the risks involved. Chris cautions that: “Deliberately altering the atmosphere, a shared global resource, is fraught with ethical, geopolitical and practical problems.” That’s the case whether geoengineering is carried out by states or private interests.
Is there public support, for instance? Democratic oversight? What if something goes wrong – who is to blame and who is responsible for fixing the mess? Should all countries agree on an action plan, since geoengineering will affect everyone?
These are concerns shared by Cambridge’s Albert Van Wijngaarden, UCL’s Chloe Colomer and Adrian Hindes of Australia National University. Writing last year on the risk of critical voices being excluded from geoengineering research, they worry that if “geoengineering is essentially allowed to self-regulate, with no effective global governance, future research could easily take us down a dangerous path.”
They outline an “unproductive” polarization between advocates and critics, and argue that “upcoming research projects must factor in the concerns of opponents, and not represent only supporters of geoengineering or those who have not been explicitly against it.”
Perhaps the UK government was indeed listening: in the recent Aria funding announcement, Van Wijngaarden and Colomer were awarded a grant to design “engagement programs” for people in the Arctic who are “among the most impacted” by climate change and geoengineering, but who are often ignored “because of ongoing and historical power imbalances.”
People such as Fitzgerald (the Arctic ice freezer) do tend to recognize these issues. Fitzgerald, together with his colleague Elil Hoole, says that plans to dim the sun must be led by those most affected by climate change.
Robert Chris calls solar geoengineering a “crazy idea.” But he says the alternative – not doing it – may be worse. “Perhaps solar geoengineering is the price we must pay for our wholly inadequate climate change response to date.”
Source : https://studyfinds.org/uk-funds-controversial-climate-cooling-research-geoengineering/
