CaltechAUTHORS
Published March 22, 2024 | Version v1
Journal Article Open

Physical science research needed to evaluate the viability and risks of marine cloud brightening

Creators

Abstract

Marine cloud brightening (MCB) is the deliberate injection of aerosol particles into shallow marine clouds to increase their reflection of solar radiation and reduce the amount of energy absorbed by the climate system. From the physical science perspective, the consensus of a broad international group of scientists is that the viability of MCB will ultimately depend on whether observations and models can robustly assess the scale-up of local-to-global brightening in today's climate and identify strategies that will ensure an equitable geographical distribution of the benefits and risks associated with projected regional changes in temperature and precipitation. To address the physical science knowledge gaps required to assess the societal implications of MCB, we propose a substantial and targeted program of research—field and laboratory experiments, monitoring, and numerical modeling across a range of scales.

Copyright and License

© 2024 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial License 4.0 (CC BY-NC).

Acknowledgement

We thank D. W. Fahey, G. Frost, and S. Nasiri for comments and ongoing support of this effort. We thank the Department of Energy (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory for Figs. 1 to 3, and C. R. Thompson (NOAA/Chemical Science Laboratory) for Fig. 4. The results and conclusions, as well as any views or opinions expressed herein, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NASA, NOAA, NSF, or the Departments of Commerce or Energy.

Funding

This work was supported by NOAA Climate Program Office Earth’s Radiation Budget Grant #03-01-07-001; Atmospheric System Research (ASR) program as part of the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Biological and Environmental Research (BER); DOE/BER grants DE-SC0022227 (to D.T.M.), DE-SC0021045 (to L.M.R.), and DE-SC0012704 (to A.C.M. and F.Y.); University of Colorado, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences Visiting Fellow Program (to M.S.D.); Pacific Northwest National Laboratory project 76858 (to C.M.K.); Pacific Northwest National Laboratory project 57131 under Battelle Memorial Institute contract DE-A06-76RLO 1830 (to C.M.K., J.M., M.W.C., and A.G.); Argonne National Laboratory DE-AC02-06CH11357 (to V.P.G.); Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory under contract nos. DE-AC52-07NA27344 and LLNL-JRNL-853525 (to X.Z.); Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (to M.L.); NSF grant AGS-2133229 (to R.A.S. and W.C.); and German Research Foundation under grants HO 6588/1-1 and HO 6588/3-1 (to F.H.) and 500932476 (to A.P.).

Contributions

G.F.: Conceptualization, supervision, project administration, and visualization. L.M.R.: Conceptualization and investigation. V.P.G.: Conceptualization, methodology, supervision, and visualization. W.C.: Conceptualization. P.K.Q.: Conceptualization. M.S.D.: Conceptualization, investigation, validation, supervision, and visualization. R.W.: Methodology and resources. P.P.: Conceptualization. J.Z.: Conceptualization. J.M.: Conceptualization and validation. X.Z.: Conceptualization. C.M.K.: Conceptualization. M.W.C.: Conceptualization. D.T.M.: Conceptualization. A.C.M.: Conceptualization and project administration. F.H.: Conceptualization. A.P.: Conceptualization and resources. M.L.: Conceptualization. A.G.: Conceptualization. Y.M.: Conceptualization and methodology. F.G.: Conceptualization. K.S.S.: Conceptualization. All authors contributed to the writing and reviewing of the manuscript.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Files

sciadv.adi8594.pdf

Files (987.9 kB)

Name Size
md5:74721dc2f083b93e27ed66ace979f435
987.9 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Funding

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
03-01-07-001
United States Department of Energy
DE-SC0022227
United States Department of Energy
DE-SC0021045
United States Department of Energy
DE-SC0012704
University of Colorado Colorado Springs
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
76858
United States Department of Energy
DE-A06-76RLO 1830
United States Department of Energy
DE-AC02-06CH11357
United States Department of Energy
DE-AC52-07NA27344
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
LLNL-JRNL-853525
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
National Science Foundation
AGS-2133229
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
HO 6588/1-1
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
HO 6588/3-1
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
500932476

Dates

Accepted
2024-03-22
published print