Articles | Volume 23, issue 24
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-15305-2023
https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-23-15305-2023
Research article
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14 Dec 2023
Research article | Highlight paper |  | 14 Dec 2023

Climate intervention using marine cloud brightening (MCB) compared with stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) in the UKESM1 climate model

Jim M. Haywood, Andy Jones, Anthony C. Jones, Paul Halloran, and Philip J. Rasch

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Cited articles

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Ahlm, L., Jones, A., Stjern, C. W., Muri, H., Kravitz, B., and Kristjánsson, J. E.: Marine cloud brightening – as effective without clouds, Atmos. Chem. Phys., 17, 13071–13087, https://doi.org/10.5194/acp-17-13071-2017, 2017. 
Alterskjær, K. and Kristjánsson, J. E.: The sign of the radiative forcing from marine cloud brightening depends on both particle size and emission amount, Geophys. Res. Lett., 40, 210–215, https://doi.org/10.1029/2012GL054286, 2013. 
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Alterskjaer, K., Kristjánsson, J. E., Boucher, O., Muri, H., Niemeier, U., Schmidt, H., Schulz, M., and Timmreck, C.: Sea-salt injections into the low-latitude marine boundary layer: The transient response in three Earth system models, J. Geophys. Res.-Atmos., 118, 12195–12206, https://doi.org/10.1002/2013JD020432, 2013. 
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Executive editor
This paper presents a timely and topical research. It directly compares the marine cloud brightening (MCB) with the stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI) effects by utilizing the fully coupled atmosphere-ocean simulations. The study also reveals some new side effects by the MCB geoengineering, such as the locking of the climate into a permanent La Nina state and an increase in sea-level over the south Pacific Ocean. Those effects should be taken into account when developing geoengineering plans.
Short summary
The difficulties in ameliorating global warming and the associated climate change via conventional mitigation are well documented, with all climate model scenarios exceeding 1.5 °C above the preindustrial level in the near future. There is therefore a growing interest in geoengineering to reflect a greater proportion of sunlight back to space and offset some of the global warming. We use a state-of-the-art Earth-system model to investigate two of the most prominent geoengineering strategies.
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