Global warming mitigation by means of controlled aerosol emissions into the stratosphere: Global and regional peculiarities of temperature response as estimated in IAP RAS CM simulations

Abstract

The problem of climate warming mitigation by means of controlled sulphur emissions into the stratosphere has become of growing interest in recent years. Using the IAP RAS global climate model with uniform horizontal distribution of stratospheric aerosols, it has been shown that a complete compensation of global warming, realizable under the SRES A1B scenario of the anthropogenic impact on climate, requires stratospheric sulfate emissions of 5–16 TgS/yr (depending on the chosen values of stratospheric aerosol parameters) in the middle and of 10–30 TgS/yr at the end of the 21st century. Such emissions will result in the essential additional aerosol pollution of the troposphere due to the sedimentation of stratospheric aerosol particles there. Significant-in-magnitude regional anomalies of the surface air temperature of different signs occur in global warming compensation in different regions. Warming compensation in the most sensitive to climate forcing Earth regions (in particular, Siberia), additionally increases the required emissions of stratospheric aerosols by about 10%. In addition, in the case of ceasing such controlled climate forcing, its temperature effect vanishes in one to two decades with a sharp acceleration of global and regional near-surface warming in this period. Thus, the rate of regional temperature changes will attain 3–4 K/decade if the compensating action ceases in 2075.