Global Warming Solution: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

A handful of scientists and engineers think a solution to global warming could exist in the clouds. FRANK delves into a little blue sky thinking to find out if they’re right.

In the words of American rock band Grateful Dead, “You get shown the light, in the strangest of places if you look at it right.” And it seems the answer to cooling the critical temperature of our planet could be found in a volcano in the Philippines.

When Mount Pinatubo erupted in 1991, it released sulfates that reached the stratosphere in the upper layer of the atmosphere. Sulfates then mixed with the atmosphere to reflect sunlight and, over the next two years, the planet’s temperature cooled by about one degree with a striking increase in Arctic ice cover in 1992.

This accidental cooling could lead to the emergency brake our planet needs, and a group of scientists and engineers are locked in a race against time trying to establish how we can synthesize this effect in an impactful solution.

If we were in any doubt about the haste at which we need to move, Peter Wadhams’ book A Farewell to Ice makes for a sobering read. Wadhams, who has spent more than 40 years documenting the Arctic, predicts that with our carbon dioxide (CO2) consumption at its current rate, the landscape of our planet could have changed irrevocably within 15 years. The tipping point, he says, will be if the permafrost on the ocean bed melts.

“It protects us from a large amount of methane, and if it melts there could be a big boost in the gas, which will cause a sudden warming. A one to two-meter rise in sea level by the end of the century will have enormous implications for coastlines, with serious flooding in poor countries like Bangladesh.”

Ice reflects solar radiation far more effectively than open water, and without it, the global thermostat will shoot up. Given that the poles have such a huge influence on the critical outcome of the next 20 years, it’s here that scientists are focusing on solutions.

The relatively new field of geo-engineering aims to balance out global warming using man-made climate intervention. Projects range from the development of artificial trees to ocean fertilization. According to a collection of scientists and engineers, the solution for the poles is Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB), a proposed solar radiation management climate engineering technique that would make clouds brighter, reflecting a small fraction of incoming sunlight back into space in order to offset anthropogenic global warming.

Stephen Salter, the Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design at the University of Edinburgh is one of MCB’s greatest advocates. Working alongside the physicist John Latham of The National Center for Atmospheric Research, Salter’s work is based around the development of a fleet of autonomous hydrofoil spray vessels. Filtered water would be pumped through sub-micron spray nozzles to eventually form a marine boundary layer to cloud level.

But funding for Salter’s ideas is woefully lacking. “I’ve been trying to do the engineering but there’s been absolutely no money for that at all,” reveals the scientist, who is now relying solely on his pension to fund the work.

On the other side of the Atlantic, Kelly Wanser, executive director at SilverLining (an NGO that supports research in interventions to reduce heat in climate) and previously the director of the Marine Cloud Brightening Project, believes that we can buy time for what she calls ‘an emergency medicine for our climate fever’. “It’s possible that by reflecting just one or two percent more sunlight from the atmosphere, we could offset 2°C (approximately 35.6°F) or more of warming,” she explains.

At the University of Washington, a team of retired engineers has developed a nozzle spray system that generates three trillion droplets per second to begin the process of man-made cloud intervention. But the naysayers of geo-engineering argue that man-made intervention will only patch up the problem, allowing us to continue to produce CO2 at our current rate.

There is also the possibility that the use of MCB will have a detrimental effect on weather systems needed to support food growth and stabilize life in some locations. The problem is, that the ideas behind MCB are still only theoretical and there’s a lot of uncertainty around the effect.

Wanser emphasizes that despite the many global projects working towards making the theories a reality, significant funding is still lacking. But if just one of the projects successfully moves from the theoretical to the physical in the next five years, we could buy ourselves much needed time.

As Wanser says, “We do have the ability to develop and agree on solutions to protect people and restore our climate to health. This could mean that to remain safe, we reflect sunlight for a few decades while we green our industries and remove CO2.”

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From intelligent debate to cutting-edge science, and risky sports to surreal charter experiences, FRANK does not shy away from the awkward, controversial, or questionable details. Brazen at times, amusing in spirit, and always transparent in discussion, the focus is on discovering new angles and enjoying every minute. And, of course, always being ‘frank’ about the conclusions.

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