Vetting Climate Restoration Technologies Using Climate Modeling and Impact Assessment: A Case Study.Impact of artificially increasing Arctic Sea Ice Albedo on the midlatitudes and tropics

Abstract:

Fully interactive climate modeling and simulation could be a powerful tool to vet climate restoration technologies and evaluate their risks and benefits before they are field-tested and deployed. Additionally, we need tools that enable high resolution localized impact assessment of climate restoration technologies both in the near and long term. Currently we are building such a tool at Climformatics. Used in conjunction with climate modeling capabilities, such a tool can be a powerful means to vet the risks and benefits of climate restoration technologies. Furthermore, it can easily be used as a portable plug and play module with Integrated Assessment Models to obtain the impacts on different industry verticals, local and regional economies. That in turn can help to evaluate risk mitigation strategies, build climate resilience, environmental sustainability, and address important socio-economic issues.

In this paper we present one such case study of Ice911’s sea ice restoration solution. Artificial enhancement of sea ice albedo (Field et al 2018) may be able to restore thinning Arctic sea ice (Bhattacharyya et al 2018, 2019). We model and simulate sea ice albedo enhancement both Arctic wide and localized over small area in the Fram Strait and study the impacts of these perturbations on the Arctic and global climate. The impact of such perturbations on Arctic sea ice metrics and Arctic climate dynamics is reported in Ivanova et al 2020. Here we study the impacts of increasing sea ice albedo in the Arctic on the jet streams and extreme weather events in the midlatitudes.

Ivanova D., Bhattacharyya S., Mlaker V., Field L., (2020), Can a localized artificial enhancement of Sea Ice Albedo in the Arctic help restore Arctic sea ice and climate? Abstract submitted to GC021 session of AGU Fall 2020 meeting.

Bhattacharyya S., Ivanova D., Mlaker V., Field L., (2019), https://www.essoar.org/doi/abs/10.1002/essoar.10500552.1

Field, L., Ivanova, D., Bhattacharyya, S., Mlaker, V., Sholtz, A., Decca, R., et al. (2018). Earth’s Future, 6. https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EF000820

Bhattacharyya S., Ivanova D., Mlaker V., Field L.,(2018), https://www.essoar.org/doi/pdf/10.1002/essoar.10500552.1