Will Geoengineering Change Weather Patterns?

Sun dimming, also known extravagantly as “solar radiation management projects,” are the attempt to reduce the amount of sunlight making its way to the Earth’s surface by placing something in its path. Many believe that geoengineering projects such as these would go a long way to counteracting the effects of climate change.

Solar dimming does take place naturally, if and when a volcanic eruption spews enough ash into the atmosphere to minimize the levels of sunlight reaching the surface, however, manually implementing something like this is fraught with perils and unknowns.

A new study by Dr Peter Braesicke, from the Centre for Atmospheric Science at Cambridge University, looks at the possible impacts of sun dimming and the effect that it would have on the planet’s wider climate systems.

Teleconnections are the phenomenon of distant climate patterns relating to one another at large distance, such as the link between sea-level pressure at Tahiti and Darwin, Australia, which defines the Southern Oscillation.

“It is important that we look for unintended consequences of any sun dimming schemes,” said Braesicke. “We have to test our models continuously against observations to make sure that they are ‘fit-for-purpose’, and it’s important that we should not only look at highly averaged ‘global’ quantities.”

The research done by Braesicke and his team allow them to assess what would happen if a geoengineering project such as solar dimming was initiated.

“We have shown that important teleconnections are likely to change in such a geoengineered future, due to chemistry-climate interactions and in particular, due to changing stratospheric ozone,” concluded Braesicke. “In our model, the forced variability of northern high latitude temperatures changes spatially, from a polecentred pattern to a pattern over the Pacific region when the solar irradiance is reduced. Future geoengineering studies need to consider the full evolution of the stratosphere, including its chemical behaviour.”

In other words, while we might end up cooling our planet by minimizing how much solar radiation makes it into the atmosphere, we may conversely minimize the amount of rain that falls over Africa and Asia during the summer monsoons, thus affecting billions of peoples water supplies.

Everything is linked to everything else. Or, at least, that seems to be what the evidence is showing us.

Source: Wiley-Blackwell
Image Source: John Davey

4 thoughts on “Will Geoengineering Change Weather Patterns?”

  1. For anyone who thinks these climate cooling ideas are “nutty”, you obviously don’t understand the danger of climate change. Climate change can quite simply destroy civilization within a relatively short period. Even mild climate change severely threatens food supplies and infrastructure and will continue to do so to a point which will overwhelm society in the near future. Get this through your head: NO AMOUNT OF CARBON DIETING WILL STOP THIS! With this in mind aggressive geoengineering and tampering with the atmosphere, even if it completely fails, is more than worth the risks it poses which are miniscule compared with the effects of climate change. Therefore lets stop wasting time and just do it!

  2. The ongoing private abd military geoengineering projects in the US and elsewhere have already changed the climate as we know it.
    Here in Florida we no longer have the daily summer rains and instead we have droughts. The temperatures in the winter are much lower now than in years previous.
    It is understood by many scientists that a global dimming is happening which has many concerned about how photosynthesis will be effected.

    Here are a number of Atmospheric Aerosol Geoengineering Projects:

    Aeromet, Inc. (L-3 Communications) – U.S Department of Defense

    BAMEX – Bow Echo and Mesoscale Convective Vortex Experiment

    CALIPSO – CloudSat Validation Experiment

    Delaware Department of Agriculture Cloud Seeding Program

    Edwards Aquifer Authority

    Federal Aviation Administration – Great Lakes Division

    Gratiot Weather Modification Project

    Illinois Weather Modification Projects

    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – National Hurricane Center

    Naval Surface Warfare Center

    Nevada State Cloud Seeding Program

    New Mexico BLAST (Burst Light and Stratus Transmission) Project

    North Dakota Cloud Modification Project (NDCMP)

    North Dakota Thunderstorm Project – North Dakota Atmospheric Resource Board

    North Dakota Tracer Experiment – North Dakota Atmospheric Resource Board

    Northeast Sampling Program – Sonoma Technology, Inc.

    NSF/NCAR ICE-L Field Campaign

    Oklahoma Weather Modification Project (OWMP)

    Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District Rainfall Enhancement Program

    Santa Barbara County Water Agency

    Sonoma Technology, Inc.

    Stanislaus Weather Modification Program

    State of South Dakota – Department of Natural Resources Division of Weather Modification

    Texas Central High Plains Rainfall Enhancement Program

    Texas Experiment in Augmenting Rainfall through Cloud Seeding (TEXARC)

    Texas Weather Modification Program

    The University of North Dakota – US Environmental Protection Agency

    University of Arizona – National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

    Upper American River Cloud Seeding Project

    Upper Payette River Basin Cloud Seeding Program

    Upper Tuolumne River Weather Modification Program

    Utah Division of Water Resources

    Utah Division of Water Resources

    West Central Texas Council of Governments Rainfall Enhancement Program

    Western Dakota Water Development District – Black Hills Council of Local Government

    Wyoming Weather Modification Pilot Program

  3. Weather Modification has been in full force for over 10 years now. You may have heard of Chem Trails spraying.

    In 2001, while living in Columbia SC, I watched the criss cross spray pattern in the sky and wondered “what the heck are those planes spraying”. The criss cross patterns spread to form a full cloud cover, w/i 12 hours it would rain. Rain when SC was in the middle of a drought and the weather men we calling for sunny skies and no chance of rain.

    Also, it is interesting that ancient text translated by Sitchin, mentioned that the gods wanted the gold found on earth transformed into a powered form and sprayed in their atmosphere for a “sun screen” to protect their home planet from their sun.

  4. This article is a farce, they have been spraying northern California and southern Oregon on an almost daily basis for the last 2 years at least. Our drought is deepening, we have no thunderstorms any more, the snow tastes metallic and the winter skies are hardly ever blue as dozens of aerosoling aircraft daily obliterate our sunlight. I stopped at grad school in biology because of the text book white washing of the truth and the sheep-like objectivity of the science professors. They literally have had the ability to think critically schooled out of them.

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