Assessing the controllability of Arctic sea ice extent by sulfate aerosol geoengineering

Jackson, L. S., Crook, J. A., Jarvis, A., Leedal, D., Ridgwell, A., Vaughan, N. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4532-2084 and Forster, P. M. (2015) Assessing the controllability of Arctic sea ice extent by sulfate aerosol geoengineering. Geophysical Research Letters, 42 (4). pp. 1223-1231. ISSN 0094-8276

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Abstract

In an assessment of how Arctic sea ice cover could be remediated in a warming world, we simulated the injection of SO2 into the Arctic stratosphere making annual adjustments to injection rates. We treated one climate model realization as a surrogate “real world” with imperfect “observations” and no rerunning or reference to control simulations. SO2 injection rates were proposed using a novel model predictive control regime which incorporated a second simpler climate model to forecast “optimal” decision pathways. Commencing the simulation in 2018, Arctic sea ice cover was remediated by 2043 and maintained until solar geoengineering was terminated. We found quantifying climate side effects problematic because internal climate variability hampered detection of regional climate changes beyond the Arctic. Nevertheless, through decision maker learning and the accumulation of at least 10 years time series data exploited through an annual review cycle, uncertainties in observations and forcings were successfully managed.

Item Type: Article
Additional Information: ©2015. The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Uncontrolled Keywords: geoengineering,sequential decision making,arctic sea ice,climate change,sdg 13 - climate action ,/dk/atira/pure/sustainabledevelopmentgoals/climate_action
Faculty \ School: Faculty of Science > School of Environmental Sciences
UEA Research Groups: Faculty of Science > Research Groups > Centre for Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences
Depositing User: Pure Connector
Date Deposited: 27 Mar 2015 14:22
Last Modified: 13 Apr 2023 13:47
URI: https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/53027
DOI: 10.1002/2014GL062240

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