A simple model to account for regional inequalities in the effectiveness of solar radiation management

Abstract

We present a simple model to account for the potential effectiveness of so- lar radiation management (SRM) in compensating for anthropogenic climate change. This method provides a parsimonious way to account for regional inequality in the assessment of SRM effectiveness and allows policy and decision makers to examine the linear climate response to different SRM configurations. To illustrate how the model works, we use data from an ensemble of modeling experiments conducted with a general circulation model (GCM). We find that an SRM scheme optimized to restore population-weighted temperature changes to their baseline compensates for 99% of these changes while an SRM scheme optimized for population-weighted pre- cipitation changes compensates for 97% of these changes. Hence, while inequalities in the effectiveness of SRM are important, they may not be as severe as it is often assumed.