Pathways, Impacts, and Policies on Severe Aerosol Injections into the Atmosphere: 2011 Severe Atmospheric Aerosols Events Conference

Abstract

WHat: Geologists, meteorologists, physicists, and numerous scientists from other disciplines met to discuss climatic and environmental changes as a result of various kinds of huge injections of aerosols into the atmosphere and the possible consequences for the world population. WHen: 11–12 August 2011 WHere: Hamburg, Germany H uge amounts of aerosols can be generated by volcanic eruptions, forest fires, and asteroid impacts. They would also occur as a result of nuclear weapon explosions and subsequent fire storms. Climate engineering might make use of the strong effects of large amounts of aerosols with the goal of reducing the solar radiation that warms the atmosphere. These events were topic of an international conference1 of the Research Group Climate Change and Security (CLISEC) of KlimaCampus at the University of Hamburg and the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia (KAUST). It was at the KlimaCampus of the University of Hamburg that, for the first time, one meeting included discussions of all kinds of aerosol sources in all aspects, from pathways and impacts to policies. The conference was divided into four sessions, each dealing with different aspects of large aerosol injections, and included a lecture by O. B. Toon about severe atmospheric aerosol events along the geologic time scale. The following summarizes the sessions. LI F E CYC LE O F L A RG E A E RO SO L INJECTIONS. The first session dealt with the life cycle of large aerosol injections from particle generation, injection into the atmosphere, vertical transport mechanisms, and transfer into the stratosphere, as well as various kinds of removal processes. H.-F. Graf reported on a simulation of volcanic and biomass-burning plumes with a very high resolving numerical model. D. Kunkel talked about the risk