ScienceMag: geoengineering solutions to warming could trigger more climate change
Grabiele Hegerl of the Grant Institute, and Susan Solomon of the Earth System Research Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration discuss some of the risks of tampering with the climate system, while attempting to mitigate warming, on yesterday’s Perspectives section of Science magazine.
“As the risks of climate change and the difficulty of effectively reducing greenhouse gas emissions become increasingly obvious, potential geoengineering solutions are widely discussed.”
Their main point is that “climate change impacts are driven not only by temperature changes, but also by change in other aspects of the climate system, such as precipitation and climate extremes.” They claim that if geoengineering studies focus too heavily on warming, “critical risks associated with such possible “cures” will not be evaluated appropriately.”
They use as an example, “attempts to limit climate warming by reducing incoming shortwave radiation”. Reducing incoming shortwave radiation would lead to decreases in temperature. Precipitation, however, “reacts more strongly to reductions in incoming shortwave radiation, such as volcanic eruptions or shortwave climate engineering, than to reductions in outgoing longwave radiation associated with greenhouse gas forcing.” The resulting risk would be major precipitation changes. In this case the risk of drought.
The authors’ conclusion is that “climate change is about much more than temperature change, and using temperature alone as a proxy for its effects represents an inappropriate risk to the health of our society and to the planet.
We are on an era of high risk. Ours is indeed a risk society. Every step to face the Century’s challenges must account for all systemic risk involved. We can’t afford any simplification at all.
Tags: Climate Change, climate science, geoengineering