14 DAY TRIAL // Lately, it is becoming more and more obvious that the world is warming up, and that something needs to be done to counteract this phenomenon. Dimming the Sun – as in reducing the amount of solar radiation making its way to the planetary surface – is now a hot topic for debate.
Solar dimming occurs naturally too, as a direct result of massive volcanic eruptions, or following the burning of massive amounts of fossil fuels, including oil, natural gas and coal.
However, what climate experts don't know is how dimming the Sun on purpose would affect the entire planet. The goal of this geoengineering method is to reduce the amount of solar radiation that hits the Earth's surface.
Normally, this heat would not be a problem, were it not for the fact that, upon bouncing off the ground and the oceans, it remains trapped under a layer of greenhouse gases. This forces the heat to circulate in the air, rather than get reflected back into space.
As more and more solar radiation pours in, Earth's temperature steadily raises, giving birth to the greenhouse effect, and causing global warming that brings climate change with it.
There are currently several methods of geoengineering that the international scientific community is considering and analyzing, and creating an artificial, Sun-dimming effect is one of them.
In a new study, experts at Cambridge University look at the possible effects applying this technique globally could have on our planet's atmosphere, oceans, and the relations that form between the two.
The research team was led by expert Dr Peter Braesicke, who is based at the Cambridge Center for Atmospheric Science. He says planetary teleconnections may be drastically affected by the method.
These teleconnections are basically the links and relations that form between distant climate anomalies. For example, the Southern Oscillation is defined by sea-level pressure in Tahiti and Darwin, Australia.
“It is important that we look for unintended consequences of any sun dimming schemes. We have to test our models continuously against observations to make sure that they are 'fit-for-purpose', and it's important that we should not only look at highly averaged 'global' quantities,” Braesicke says.
The scientist says that the correlations that have developed between tropical temperatures and extra-tropical circulation might be jeopardized by applying geoengineering techniques such as solar dimming.
“This could have consequences for prevailing weather regime, particularly for the El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) teleconnection,” the expert argues.
“Our research allows us to assess how forced atmospheric variability, exemplified by the northern polar region, might change in a geoengineered world with a dimmed Sun,” Braesicke concludes, quoted by SpaceRef.