Geoengineering approaches to reduce climate change unlikely to succeed, study says
Thursday, December 5, 2013 - 10:01
in Earth & Climate
Reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the planet's surface by geoengineering may not undo climate change after all. Two German researchers used a simple energy balance analysis to explain how the Earth's water cycle responds differently to heating by sunlight than it does to warming due to a stronger atmospheric greenhouse effect. Further, they show that this difference implies that reflecting sunlight to reduce temperatures may have unwanted effects on the Earth's rainfall patterns. The results are now published in Earth System Dynamics, an open access journal of the European Geosciences Union (EGU).