Climate change: Researchers want to use airplanes to freeze poles again
Created: 09/21/2022, 20:39
By: Nadja Austel
Climate change is driving global warming inexorably.
A reversal hardly seems possible, but research is working on solutions.
Geoengineering is the magic word in which science is looking for solutions in the fight against climate change.
Environmental researchers are targeting a possible – albeit unexpected – tool: Airplanes, of all things, the “kerosene slingers” and “climate killers” could serve as an efficient means of saving the polar ice caps.
The scientific journal
Environmental Research Communications
, which publishes research from all areas of environmental science, published a study that explored this idea.
The environmental researcher and Yale lecturer Wake Smith and his colleagues developed a corresponding geoengineering project in which tanker aircraft are to spray aerosols into the atmosphere.
The pace of climate change: In the past seven years, we've experienced the five warmest years since 1880
Year | Global warming versus deviation from mean temperature (1901–2000) |
|---|---|
2016 | 0.99 degrees Celsius |
2020 | 0.97 degrees Celsius |
2019 | 0.94 degrees Celsius |
2015 | 0.93 degrees Celsius |
2017 | 0.90 degrees Celsius |
Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental information
Reversing Climate Change: How Airplanes Become a Climate Intervention
Smith researches, writes and teaches on climate interventions, and also deals with the feasibility - i.e. also with the financing - of possible geoengineering projects.
One of his recent texts presents a range of future scenarios in which geoengineering could be used to limit the effects of climate change.
Goals range from halving future global warming, to halting warming and returning temperatures to 2020 levels. The program envisages three successive generations of purpose-built tankers, carrying aerosols at an altitude of approximately 20 kilometers into the earth's atmosphere.
Aerosols for the poles – reversing climate change through air injections
As explained time and again during the corona pandemic, science understands aerosols to mean microscopically small solid or liquid particles ("floating particles") which, due to their low weight, remain in a gas or gas mixture for a longer period of time, for example in the air, "float".
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Airplanes could spray aerosols on the polar ice caps to cool them down by several degrees Celsius.
(symbol photo) © dpa
If these aerosols were sprayed in sufficient quantities at relevant points in the earth's atmosphere, they would slightly darken the underlying surface, says Smith.
These "aerosol injections" could be done seasonally, say, during the long days of spring and summer.
Climate change: Geoengineering project to refreeze poles is cost-effective
However, according to the researchers involved in the project, existing military tanker aircraft do not have enough tank capacity.
According to Smith, a fleet of around 125 newly designed tanker aircraft could cool the regions of the Arctic and Antarctic Circles by two degrees Celsius per year.
The overall cost for the remainder of the 21st century and the annual cost in 2100 remained inexpensive compared to other post-Smith mitigation actions.
With around 18 billion dollars per year, such a geoengineering program would be within a financial framework that the international community of states would be able to afford in the interest of environmental protection.
(Nadia Austel)
