Title: The climate effects of increasing ocean albedo: an idealized representation of solar geoengineering

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 G1ocean-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 1.14K, 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, ormore » other general forcings with a strong land–ocean contrast. As a result, it also reinforces previous findings that keeping top-of-atmosphere net radiative flux constant is not sufficient for preventing changes in global mean temperature.« less

Authors:

Kravitz, Ben  ^[1];

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Rasch, Philip J. ^[1]; Wang, Hailong ^[1]; Robock, Alan  ^[2];

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Gabriel, Corey ^[3]; Boucher, Olivier  ^[4];

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Cole, Jason N. S. ^[5]; Haywood, Jim ^[6]; Ji, Duoying ^[7]; Jones, Andy  ^[8];

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Lenton, Andrew ^[9]; Moore, John C. ^[7]; Muri, Helene  ^[10];

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Niemeier, Ulrike ^[11]; Phipps, Steven ^[12]; Schmidt, Hauke ^[11]; Watanabe, Shingo ^[13]; Yang, Shuting  ^[14];

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Yoon, Jin -Ho  ^[15]

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+ Show Author Affiliations

1. Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)
2. Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, NJ (United States)
3. Scripps Institution of Oceanography, La Jolla, CA (United States)
4. CNRS / Sorbonne Univ., Paris (France)
5. Environment and Climate Change Canada, Toronto (Canada)
6. Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter (United Kingdom); Univ. of Exeter, Exeter (United Kingdom)
7. Beijing Normal Univ., Beijing (China)
8. Met Office Hadley Centre, Exeter (United Kingdom)
9. CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere, Tasmania (Australia)
10. Univ. of Oslo, Oslo (Norway); Norwegian Univ. of Science and Technology, Trondheim (Norway)
11. Max Planck Institute of Meteorology, Hamburg (Germany)
12. Univ. of New South Wales, Sydney (Australia); Univ. of Tasmania, Tasmania (Australia)
13. Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokohama (Japan)
14. Danish Meteorological Institute, Copenhagen (Denmark)
15. Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Gwangju (South Korea)

Publication Date:

2018-09-12

Research Org.:

Pacific Northwest National Lab. (PNNL), Richland, WA (United States)

Sponsoring Org.:

USDOE

OSTI Identifier:

1475205

Report Number(s):

PNNL-SA-133629
Journal ID: ISSN 1680-7324

Grant/Contract Number:  

AC05-76RL01830

Resource Type:

Accepted Manuscript

Journal Name:

Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (Online)

Additional Journal Information:

Journal Name: Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (Online); Journal Volume: 18; Journal Issue: 17; Journal ID: ISSN 1680-7324

Publisher:

European Geosciences Union

Country of Publication:

United States

Language:

English

Subject:

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES