LinkedIn post on new solar geoengineering postdoc position.

I am pleased to announce that I have signed a new Postdoctoral Research Fellow contract to work on solar geoengineering simulations with the Met Office climate model, at the University of Exeter, with Jim Haywood.

Solar geoengineering is a controversial topic, but one that I think requires our close attention as the planet warms to unsafe levels.

Solar geoengineering refers to climate interventions which deliberately reflect solar radiation to counter the effects of human-caused climate change. The most commonly discussed and studied method is stratospheric aerosol injection, which involves adding aerosols in the upper atmosphere around 20 km high and reflect ~1% of the incoming sunlight. Unlike carbon dioxide which hangs around the atmosphere for a long time, these aerosols stay in the upper atmosphere for ~1 year, so they would need to be continuously injected to continue having an effect. And, if we stopped the injection, the warming from the increased greenhouse effect which they masked, would heat up the planet at an unprecedented rate.

Climate model studies show, however, that the impacts of warming on extreme precipitation events, droughts, heatwaves, sea-ice, sea level rise, hurricane strength and intensity could be reduced with a wise deployment strategy.

Hence stratospheric aerosol injection could potentially be used to keep the planet at a safe level of warming while we reduce our emissions and remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It is certainly NOT an alternative to cutting emissions, only reaching net zero emissions will stabilize the climate for the long term.

Solar geoengineering has many risks and uncertainties: some physical risks remain even in an optimal deployment scenario. And some risks are due to a non-optimal deployment strategy. For example, a hemispherically asymmetric deployment of stratospheric aerosol injection will have important impacts on the tropical rainbelt. Moreover, there are many other non-physical risks related to how human societies will react : for example, will it discourage societies from reducing their emissions (which, again, we really need to do to stabilize the climate)?

Solar geoengineering would be a radical and risky endeavour, but it is only because of the devastating impacts of warming that we need to carefully study it. And, that is why I am glad to start working on this important topic.