14 DAY TRIAL // In a paper published in the latest issue of the European Geosciences Union's (EGU) open-access journal Earth System Dynamics, researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry, in Jena, Germany, argue that geoengineering schemes will probably not provide the benefits for reducing climate change that proponents expect.
These schemes include multiple approaches to manipulating Earth's climate at the planetary scale. Some involve seeding the ocean with iron and boosting phytoplankton blooms that trap carbon dioxide on the ocean floor. Others are focused on putting chemicals in the atmosphere that will reflect sunlight.
MPI-B researchers say that the latter are unlikely to succeed in the real world. Their latest study calculates how Earth's waters warm due to sunlight, as opposed to how they behave when they are heated by the greenhouse effect. They argue that rainfall patterns will most likely not be affected by the release of sunlight-blocking particles in Earth's atmosphere.
“The temperature in the pot is increased by putting on a lid or by turning up the heat – but these two cases differ by how much energy flows through the pot,” explains MPI-B expert Axel Kleidon, one of the co-leaders on the new research.