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The climate effects of increasing ocean albedo: an idealized representation of solar geoengineering
Citation
Kravitz, B and Rasch, PJ and Wang, H and Robock, A and Gabriel, C and Boucher, O and Cole, JNS and Haywood, J and Ji, D and Jones, A and Lenton, A and Moore, JC and Muri, H and Niemeier, U and Phipps, S and Schmidt, H and Watanabe, S and Yang, S and Yoon, J-H, The climate effects of increasing ocean albedo: an idealized representation of solar geoengineering, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, 18 pp. 13097-13113. ISSN 1680-7316 (2018) [Refereed Article]
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Copyright 2018 Author(s). Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
DOI: doi:10.5194/acp-18-13097-2018
Abstract
Geoengineering, or climate intervention, describes methods of deliberately altering the climate system to offset anthropogenic climate change. As an idealized representation of near-surface solar geoengineering over the ocean, such as marine cloud brightening, this paper discusses experiment G1 ocean-albedo of the Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP), involving an abrupt quadrupling of the CO2 concentration and an instantaneous increase in ocean albedo to maintain approximate net top-of atmosphere radiative flux balance. A total of 11 Earth system models are relatively consistent in their temperature, radiative flux, and hydrological cycle responses to this experiment. Due to the imposed forcing, air over the land surface warms by a model average of 1.14 K, while air over most of the ocean cools. Some parts of the near-surface air temperature over ocean warm due to heat transport from land to ocean. These changes generally resolve within a few years, indicating that changes in ocean heat content play at most a small role in the warming over the oceans. The hydrological cycle response is a general slowing down, with high heterogeneity in the response, particularly in the tropics. While idealized, these results have important implications for marine cloud brightening, or other methods of geoengineering involving spatially heterogeneous forcing, or other general forcings with a strong land–ocean contrast. It also reinforces previous findings that keeping top-of-atmosphere net radiative flux constant is not sufficient for preventing changes in global mean temperature.
Item Details
| Item Type: | Refereed Article |
|---|---|
| Keywords: | geoengineering, climate models, ocean, Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project, GeoMIP |
| Research Division: | Earth Sciences |
| Research Group: | Climate change science |
| Research Field: | Climate change processes |
| Objective Division: | Environmental Policy, Climate Change and Natural Hazards |
| Objective Group: | Mitigation of climate change |
| Objective Field: | Climate change mitigation strategies |
| UTAS Author: | Phipps, S (Dr Steven Phipps) |
| ID Code: | 128758 |
| Year Published: | 2018 |
| Web of Science® Times Cited: | 5 |
| Deposited By: | Oceans and Cryosphere |
| Deposited On: | 2018-10-10 |
| Last Modified: | 2018-11-27 |
| Downloads: | 47 View Download Statistics |
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