Cloud Brightening for Climate Change!
CLOUD BRIGHTENING FOR CLIMATE CHANGE LOL ?!?
This is how they softly disclose what they’ve been doing for at least the last 20 years or more.
“Queensland scientists who have been altering clouds with tiny particles to try and limit the effects of global warming are presenting their findings for the first time at a milestone conference in Brisbane this week.
Scientists researching cloud brightening in bid to cool Great Barrier Reef to present findings
Key points:
– Cloud brightening is where clouds are modified to become more reflective, and last longer
– Queensland’s scientists used cannons to spray seawater over the reef.
– They are the first to test the cloud brightening theory.
The International Conference on Nucleation and Atmospheric Aerosols (ICNAA) will be looking at climate change and interventions, including cloud brightening.
Cloud brightening is where clouds are modified.”
Daniel Harrison, from the Southern Cross University’s Reefs and Oceans Research Cluster, heads the team, which has been shooting sea water from canons for three years to brighten clouds in a bid to help tackle global warming.
They shoot spray over the reef “to see if we can create additional cloud condensation nuclei using sea water … to try and cool the reef down and protect the coral from bleaching”.
The technique uses a device like a snow canon to shoot salt water into clouds.
The spray of sea water puts more particles in the air for clouds to build upon – creating a thicker cloud made up of more water particles.
That means the cloud reflects more sunlight, and can theoretically better protect whatever is below it.
Clouds form when invisible water vapour in the air condenses around a “cloud condensation nuclei”, which Dr Harrison said is “like a nano-sized particle floating in the atmosphere”.
Scientists from Southern Cross University use tiny particles in the atmosphere to try and reverse climate change.
“All of that water vapour as a gas is in that rising air. To form a cloud it has to condense,” he said.
“When you have very clean air, like we have coming in over the reef during summer, there’s not very many of these cloud condensation nuclei.”
This means clouds form with a small number of larger droplets, which are not good at reflecting light.
“So when you add extra sea salt crystals, you get the same cloud but it’s now made up of many more smaller droplets and that reflects more light back into space,” Dr Harrison said.
Cloud brightening involves spraying microscopic sea water droplets into the air.
Cloud brightening as theory originated in 1990s, with the idea of cooling down the planet.
“This came of the recognition that clouds are offsetting a quite a bit of global warming at the moment,” Dr Harrison said.
“We’re inadvertently brightening them around the world by creating lots of extra cloud condensation nuclei through human activities.
“And that’s offsetting some of the greenhouse gas contribution we’ve made.
“If we weren’t accidentally brightening clouds, it’d be even hotter already on the planet.”
‘We’re not out trying to cool down the reef yet’
Southern Cross University scientist Dan Harrison heads the team doing the research.
Dr Harrison’s team will present their findings at Brisbane’s QUT campus.
“It’s important to note that the research program is just that. We’re not out trying to cool down the reef yet,” Dr Harrison said.
“We’re trying to look at the fundamental science of whether this idea could work and understand which sorts of clouds over the reef are susceptible for brightening.”
This year is the first time the ICNAA will deal with the issue of climate and climate interventions, conference chair and QUT Professor Zoran Ristovski said.
That’s because aerosols (not deodorant cans but tiny particles in the atmosphere) have been flagged by the UN’s climate change panel as the “biggest uncertainty in our understanding and estimating global warming and climate change”.
“There’s still a lot to learn. We still don’t have a thorough understanding of all the mechanisms of how these particles come into the atmosphere,” Professor Ristovski said.
“We still need a lot of research to improve our models.”
More than 140 scientists are attending the conference, presenting research “covering all the continents and all the oceans”.
Professor Zoran Ristovski (left) will present his findings on cloud misting as an option to combat climate change.
Dr Harrison’s is some of the “most exciting”, according to Professor Ristovski.
“It’s something we have to grasp as a reality, that we will have to start developing these interventions in order to keep the temperature of the Earth [down],” Professor Ristovski said.
“Or at least locally to minimise these extreme changes in temperature and protect certain eco systems.”
Scientists have widely identified that more research is needed into the interactions between clouds, cloud formation nuclei and aerosol particles.
It is “one of the greatest uncertainties in climate models”, Dr Harrison said.
“This research where we can actually perturb clouds on purpose and look at how the cloud responds is going to really give us a lot of insight into improving these models of what the climate’s going to look like going forwards,” he said.
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Resources:
https://t.me/daveoneegsauschat/26177
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-28/tiny-cloud-brightening-particle-research-climate-change-icnaa/102524408
