In a new report presented by Harvard scientists, said: the global programme of sunlight filtering across the planet will cost $2 billion a year. So small, in comparison with other Grand experiments that scientists returned to the idea of creating man-made layer in the atmosphere to reflect sunlight. Still, the effects of global warming on everyone’s mind, but $2 billion is really not such a large investment.
Scientists honestly admit that it is not ready to calculate the risks of large geoengineering solutions, and therefore all experiments will first be conducted in the microscale. To do this, they plan to create a special handmade cloud and see how it will reflect sunlight and where it will lead. This is the essence of the experiment planned at Harvard next year.
Scientists plan to launch a stratospheric probe, which at a given spray height of 100 grams of calcium carbonate, a substance with excellent reflective properties and, in addition, fairly light, that the cloud lasted days, maybe even years. Probe all the time to patrol the neighborhood and put scientists information about the behavior of the cloud.
From the experimental cloud not expecting any results in the minimization of the heating of the atmosphere by Sun light. But it will serve as a prototype for creating large clouds will help to understand how to manage such objects and what to expect from them in practice. The creation of such protective barriers are unlikely to help solve the problem of global warming, but can be a tool for local action. So people learned how to cool the planet’s surface similar to how today already know how to divert the rain from the cities.
Source — Nature