- Climate change and global warming are among the greatest challenges mankind has faced up until now.
- Researchers at Harvard have put forward a new solution — they want to reflect some of the sun's heat back out to space.
- The process is referred to as "solar geoengineering" or "solar geotechnics".
How we'll be able to curtail global warming and its devastating consequences is still very much a hot potato among politicians and scientists alike — and so far, the outcome of all these debates hasn't been particularly fruitful.
However, researchers at Harvard may have come up with a solution that sounds just a little too good to be true.
In conjunction with researchers from MIT and Princeton, the group has suggested slowing down global warming by diminishing the amount of sunlight that reaches Earth's surface.
Yes, you read that right. The technology is called solar geoengineering or solar geotechnics.
According to a study published in Nature Climate Change, the researchers are considering what might happen if they were to introduce sunlight-reflecting particles into Earth's atmosphere.
In fact, too high a dose of "dimming" could even worsen the situation.
Postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Peter Irvine, was the lead author of the study.
The study suggests that this technology could the rate at which temperatures are increasing in half, which could offer global benefits without exacerbating problems in other parts of the world.
Alongside this measure, however, carbon dioxide emissions would still need to be reduced across the globe.
More water and fewer hurricanes
This is the first time a model of this sort has been used to look into the possible effects of solar geotechnics.
The researchers studied temperature and precipitation extremes, water availability, and also measured the intensity of tropical storms.
While the science surrounding geoengineering technology is over half a century old, it's only recently — since our attention has been drawn Earth's climate change — that scientists have intensified their researched the field.
Researchers at Harvard University have stressed, however, that our main response to climate change should be to curb carbon dioxide emissions; geoengineering alone simply wouldn't be capable of fully remedying the root of the environmental problems.
Links
- Halving warming with idealized solar geoengineering moderates key climate hazards
- This Spanish company found a way to produce fuel without emitting CO2 — and it's made of sewage
- The UN has warned that we only have 12 years to curb climate change
- Global warming is making oceans so acidic, they may reach the pH they were 14 million years ago
- A UN Secretary-General adviser called Donald Trump a 'psychopath' for suggesting a return to coal power
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