{"id":139524,"date":"2022-05-18T07:19:19","date_gmt":"2022-05-18T12:19:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/termination-shock-trying-to-cool-the-earth"},"modified":"2022-05-18T07:19:19","modified_gmt":"2022-05-18T12:19:19","slug":"termination-shock-trying-to-cool-the-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/termination-shock-trying-to-cool-the-earth","title":{"rendered":"Termination Shock: Trying To Cool the Earth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/termination-shock-trying-to-cool-the-earth.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A group of 60 scientists called for a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.solargeoeng.org\/\">moratorium<\/a> on <a href=\"https:\/\/theconversation.com\/why-you-need-to-get-involved-in-the-geoengineering-debate-now-85619\">solar geoengineering<\/a> last month, including technologies such as <a href=\"https:\/\/www.geoengineeringmonitor.org\/2021\/02\/stratospheric_aerosol_injection\/\">stratospheric aerosol injection<\/a> (SAI). This involves a fleet of aeroplanes releasing aerosol particles \u2013 which reflect sunlight back to outer space \u2013 into the atmosphere, cooling down the Earth.<\/p>\n<p>SAI might make the sky <a href=\"https:\/\/www.scientificamerican.com\/article\/geoengineering-could-turn-skies-white\/\">slightly whiter<\/a>. But this is the least of our concerns. SAI could pose grave dangers, potentially worse than the warming it seeks to remedy. To understand the risks, we\u2019ve undertaken a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/fclim.2021.720312\/full\">risk assessment<\/a> of this controversial technology.<\/p>\n<p>A cooler Earth means less water would be evaporating from its surfaces into the atmosphere, changing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.carbonbrief.org\/unregulated-solar-geoengineering-could-spark-droughts-and-hurricanes-study-warns\">rainfall patterns<\/a>. This could produce ripple effects across the world\u2019s ecosystems \u2013 but the exact nature of these <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2021-04-sun-reflector-earth-scientists-explore.html\">effects<\/a> depends on how SAI is used. Poor coordination of aerosol release could lead to extreme rainfall in some places and blistering drought in others, further triggering the spread of <a href=\"https:\/\/phys.org\/news\/2018-09-climate-disease-impacts.html\">diseases<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A group of 60 scientists called for a moratorium on solar geoengineering last month, including technologies such as stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI). This involves a fleet of aeroplanes releasing aerosol particles \u2013 which reflect sunlight back to outer space \u2013 into the atmosphere, cooling down the Earth. SAI might make the sky slightly whiter. But [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":556,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-engineering"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/556"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139524\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}