Impacts of hemispheric solar geoengineering on tropical cyclone frequency
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s41467-017-01606-0.pdf
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Author(s)
Jones, Anthony C.
Haywood, James M.
Dunstone, Nick
Hawcroft, Matthew K.
Hodges, Kevin I.
Jones, Andy
Emanuel, Kerry Andrew
Date Issued
November 2017
Journal
Nature Communications
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Citation
Jones, Anthony C. et al. “Impacts of Hemispheric Solar Geoengineering on Tropical Cyclone Frequency.” Nature Communications 8, 1 (November 2017): 1382 © 2017 Authors
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Solar geoengineering refers to a range of proposed methods for counteracting global warming by artificially reducing sunlight at Earth’s surface. The most widely known solar geoengineering proposal is stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), which has impacts analogous to those from volcanic eruptions. Observations following major volcanic eruptions indicate that aerosol enhancements confined to a single hemisphere effectively modulate North Atlantic tropical cyclone (TC) activity in the following years. Here we investigate the effects of both single-hemisphere and global SAI scenarios on North Atlantic TC activity using the HadGEM2-ES general circulation model and various TC identification methods. We show that a robust result from all of the methods is that SAI applied to the southern hemisphere would enhance TC frequency relative to a global SAI application, and vice versa for SAI in the northern hemisphere. Our results reemphasise concerns regarding regional geoengineering and should motivate policymakers to regulate large-scale unilateral geoengineering deployments.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Global Change Science
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1038/S41467-017-01606-0
