One promising way to combat global warming is to spray aerosols at high altitudes. It requires the use of special airplanes. However, as scientists have recently proved, it is quite possible to cope with those vehicles that already exist.
Aerosol dispersal airplanes
Dealing with global warming may be easier and cheaper than previously thought. At least, that’s according to scientists who recently explored ways to improve a long-proposed way to combat it. It is about aerosol dispersion at high altitudes.
An aerosol is a system consisting of water droplets or solid particles uniformly distributed in a gas volume. Examples of these would be smoke and fog. If they are at high altitudes, they are able to reflect rays of sunlight and thus stop the heating of the atmosphere.
Given the situation on climate change, no one doubts that protecting our planet with aerosols is a good idea. However, previous studies have shown that for this action to be effective, the substances should be atomized at altitudes of more than 20 km. And modern airplanes don’t usually get so high.
Inefficient, but the right solution
The standard methodology that is proposed to combat global warming is that aerosols should be sprayed at high altitudes over equatorial regions. Now the researchers wondered whether the same effect would not be achieved if they were sprayed at much higher latitudes and at an altitude of only 13 kilometers.
As their starting point, they took the same sulfur dioxide that had been suggested in previous studies. Its effectiveness has been well proven since the days when scientists studied the effects of volcanic eruptions. Therefore, the scientists modeled a situation where they were injected into the atmosphere at a specified location.
Studies have shown that introducing sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere at low altitudes is an effective step to combat the heating of the planet. But it is a third less effective than spraying them at a higher altitude. And they remain in the atmosphere for a much shorter period of time. So, in general, we need a lot more of them.
But for all that, the new aerosol spraying option is much better overall. Because in order to do it at an altitude of more than 20 km, we need to redesign and build special airplanes. And previous studies have shown that it can take decades.
If we do it at low altitudes, we can start much earlier with the aircraft we have now. Of course, they will also have to be remodeled, but it will still take much less time. And time is the most important thing when it comes to climate change.
According to phys.org
