Climate Geoengineering

SUGIYAMA, Masahiro, NISHIOKA, Jun, FUJIWARA, Masatomo

Climate geoengineering is defined as "deliberate large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic climate change." The slow progress of greenhouse gas emissions reduction and a heightened recognition of the risk of dangerous global warming have led to increasing attention to this novel approach, although it cannot substitute for mitigation nor adaptation. The IPCC will review geoengineering as part of its fifth assessment report. There are two main categories of climate engineering options: carbon dioxide removal (CDR), which reduces the concentration of the atmospheric carbon dioxide, a primary cause of global warming; and solar radiation management (SRM) that reduces the incoming solar radiation, thereby cooling the earth system. An example of the CDR approach is to add iron to the ocean to increase photosynthesis. Amongst many proposed approaches, the most promising is arguably the stratospheric aerosol injection, an SRM option. Its physics is similar to that of global cooling following volcanic eruptions. Research has shown that it would be accompanied with undesired effects such as changes in precipitation patterns. The GeoMIP, an international effort to climate model intercomparison on this approach, has recently been launched. Though intended as a cure of global warming, climate geoengineering confronts the human society with a number of problems. It would require an international framework since, if conducted unilaterally, it would affect the global climate as a whole. In the short run, guidelines for experiments in the natural environment would be crucial, on which international discussions just commenced.

Climate Geoengineering

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