SCREENING SUNLIGHT TO COMBAT CLIMATE CHANGE

Another class of geoengineering approaches to attempt mitigation involves changing the Earth’s albedo (reflectivity), to reflect more heat back out into space. A 0.5% albedo increase would roughly halve the effect of CO2 doubling.

Methods which have been proposed could include: releasing dust, sulfuric acid or reflecting micro-balloons into the stratosphere; enhancing low-level clouds; creating a Saturn-like ring of small particles, or putting a very large mirror or diffraction grating (thin wire mesh) in space, perhaps at the L1 point between the Earth and the Sun. The cooling effect that volcanic eruptions often have on the climate due to ash particles in the upper atmosphere can be seen as an analogy of how these methods might work.

A preliminary study by Edward Teller in 1997 presented the pros and cons of various relatively “low-tech” proposals to mitigate global warming through scattering/reflecting sunlight away from the Earth via insertion of various materials in the upper stratosphere, low earth orbit, and L1 locations.

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