Africa's Climate Response to Solar Radiation Management With Stratospheric Aerosol

Abstract

AbstractAnthropogenic warming is projected to increase the magnitude and frequency of extreme events, whose impacts are already being felt in vulnerable regions in sub‐Saharan Africa. Solar radiation management (SRM) has been proposed as an interim measure to offset warming while emissions are reduced; however, the impact of stratospheric SRM on regional climate extremes have not yet been explored, particularly in the Paris agreement context. We investigate the potential impact of SRM on temperature and rainfall means and extremes over sub‐Saharan Africa using simulations from the Geoengineering Large Ensemble. We found SRM significantly reduces temperature means and extremes; however, the effect on precipitation is not as linear. The results should be interpreted with caution as they are particular to this approach of SRM and this modelling experiment.