A variation on a stratospheric aerosol injection scheme for climate intervention

Abstract:

Many climate intervention (CI) methods have been proposed to offset the global warming expected from greenhouse gas increases. Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) involves introducing large amounts of CI material well within the stratosphere (20 km) to enhance the aerosol loading, thereby increasing reflection of solar radiation. There are technical issues that prevent this from being possible to implement today. We will discuss some of the issues, and also describe a novel variation of SAI that will allow disbursement of stratospheric SAI material using conventional aircraft. Environmental considerations will also be presented.