We really don’t know clouds at all
For those of you who don’t know, I live in the southeastern part of the United States. We have four nice seasons: fall, which can be delightful; winter, which is typically mild, but sometimes brings a little snow; tornado season; and summer. Sometimes we actually get a spring, and when we do, we really enjoy those three days.
But I shouldn’t complain about extended summer. In 1816, there wasn’t a summer at all — at least not in the northern hemisphere. The cause of this weird weather? The eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia the previous spring and summer. This was the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history. Particles that spewed from the volcano made their way to the stratosphere creating an aerosol cloud the US National Park Service described as being the size of Australia.
This huge cloud blocked the sun, bringing global temperatures down a few degrees. But those few degrees were enough to completely do away with the next year’s summer. The results were horrific. Crops failed across Europe and North America. What food could be grown was so expensive most people couldn’t afford it. Floods devastated crops in Ireland, where it rained non-stop for eight weeks. Flooding in India led to cholera outbreaks. In East Asia, the problem wasn’t flooding, but drought. Many, many people starved.
Today some people are mulling the notion of doing something like this on purpose. Crazy? Maybe, but maybe not. The idea, of course, is to create an aerosol cloud that can serve as a natural parasol to bring down temperatures and slow global warming. Some experts say it might work. Others think the unknowns are too much of a risk.
At times like this, when the science doesn’t offer a clear answer, I tend, for better or worse, to turn to literature. In this case, Termination Shock by Neal Stephenson. The premise of the novel is that the US government has totally fallen apart and the rest of the world is not doing much better. Global warming is baking the globe. A rogue billionaire takes matters into his own hands and launches a project that spews sulfur into the air in an attempt to create a situation similar to the results of the Mount Tambora eruption (without so much crop failure and starvation).
I won’t give away any of the exciting twists and turns in the plot, except to say that things went terribly wrong. So while solar engineering projects might be worth looking at as we race to slow global warming, I think we should give any climate engineering project a lot of thought before hitting the launch button. Weather is tricky stuff.
’Til next time,
Avery
PS — if you’re interested in more details about the science (and politics) of geo-engineering, this article in Science News is a good place to start.