Marine Cloud Brightening (MCB) is one of several Solar Radiation Management (SRM) geoengineering schemes that have been proposed to counter the global warming associated with climate change. Herein an in-depth investigation of some of the climatological impacts of MCB are presented. The proposed operation of MCB is located in both the sub-tropical and tropical regions, where reflection of solar radiation from marine cloud-tops is a maximum. Work described in many publications shows that polar regions are cooled by tropical seeding. The cooling of polar regions as a result of MCB leads to an increase in polar sea-ice cover and thickness. A possible explanation for cooling the poles by seeding in the tropics is an associated change in the Meridional Heat Flux (see Chapter 5 for details). Further work has been performed to assess the effectiveness of MCB as a tech- nique for weakening tropical cyclones, which are predicted to become more severe with climate change. Reducing sea surface temperatures decreases the amount of energy available to the convective processes which power a tropical cyclone. A second investigation concerns the impact of lowering sea surface temperatures via MCB on coral reefs, which are known to be vulnerable to changes in both tempera- ture and nutrient quantities within the ocean systems. The hypothesis is that MCB could counter the temperature-increase associated with climate-change, and thus prevent coral bleaching. Simulations of MCB often seed different areas, and an attempt is made herein to use pseudo-random seeding to identify optimal seeding regions. This technique also enables assessment of the impacts of seeding any given region on several remote locations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:582131 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Parkes, Benjamin James |
| Publisher | University of Leeds |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
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