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- Title
Geoengineering as a design problem.
- Authors
Kravitz, Ben; MacMartin, Douglas G.; Hailong Wang; Rasch, Philip J.
- Abstract
Understanding the climate impacts of solar geoengineering is essential for evaluating its benefits and risks. Most previous simulations have prescribed a particular strategy and evaluated its modeled effects. Here we turn this approach around by first choosing example climate objectives and then designing a strategy to meet those objectives in climate models. There are four essential criteria for designing a strategy: (i) an explicit specification of the objectives, (ii) defining what climate forcing agents to modify so the objectives are met, (iii) a method for managing uncertainties, and (iv) independent verification of the strategy in an evaluation model. We demonstrate this design perspective through two multi-objective examples. First, changes in Arctic temperature and the position of tropical precipitation due to CO2 increases are offset by adjusting high-latitude insolation in each hemisphere independently. Second, three different latitude-dependent patterns of insolation are modified to offset CO2-induced changes in global mean temperature, interhemispheric temperature asymmetry, and the Equator-to-pole temperature gradient. In both examples, the "design" and "evaluation" models are state-of-the-art fully coupled atmosphere-ocean general circulation models.
- Subjects
ENVIRONMENTAL engineering; SOLAR radiation management
- Publication
Earth System Dynamics, 2016, Vol 7, Issue 2, p469
- ISSN
2190-4979
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.5194/esd-7-469-2016