Dear Dr. Kirk MacGregor , interesting question. According to Latham et al (2012) the idea behind the marine cloud-brightening (MCB) geoengineering technique is that seeding marine stratocumulus clouds with copious quantities of roughly monodisperse sub-micrometre sea water particles might significantly enhance the cloud droplet number concentration, and thereby the cloud albedo and possibly longevity. This would produce a cooling, which general circulation model (GCM) computations suggest could—subject to satisfactory resolution of technical and scientific problems identified herein—have the capacity to balance global warming up to the carbon dioxide-doubling point.

For your further reading and additional information, please go through the attached paper. I hope it will be helpful to you.

Hello,

The need for a comprehensive solar radiation management climate engineering technique by which clouds are made brighter for controlling harmful effects of solar radiations for the purpose of offsetting anthropogenic global warming is being felt more than ever before. However, technical solutions fail because the moral obligations for saving the world for future generations, which are quintessentially important for backing the technical endeavours, are absent. The management of environmental problems requires both technical and ethical / moral solutions. They have a symbiotic relationship and one without the other cannot produce the desired changes.

Best regards,

R. Biria

Marine cloud brightening is a concept that has been floated in climate engineering discussions for some time. But what are the moral implications of this geoengineering technology, and how likely is it to be implemented? Cloud brightening is the idea that we could increase a cloud’s albedo (reflectivity) to reflect a greater amount of radiation away from the earth, thus producing a cooling effect. This is one of several ideas for climate engineering; a means of reducing the symptoms of climate change. Therefore, I will suggest that, with encyclopedic and remote sensing based studies, marine cloud brightening can be useful to minimize global climate change impacts.

Wishes

Following

How would this be achieved?

What would it acheive?

At what cost to the environment?

This is an important question. In addition the helpful observations already made, there is a bit more to add.

For a thorough study of the effects of marine cloud brightening in a 2013 paper in the Atmospheric and Chemistry journal, see

Article Reduced efficacy of marine cloud brightening geoengineering ...

For a visualization of a multi-shelled Guassian Plume Model used in this 2013 paper, see the attached image.

See, also:

Conference Paper A possible field test for marine cloud brightening geoengine...

For a more recent, related study, see

Article The evolution of biomass-burning aerosol size distributions ...

Dear Dr. Kirk MacGregor , interesting question. According to Latham et al (2012) the idea behind the marine cloud-brightening (MCB) geoengineering technique is that seeding marine stratocumulus clouds with copious quantities of roughly monodisperse sub-micrometre sea water particles might significantly enhance the cloud droplet number concentration, and thereby the cloud albedo and possibly longevity. This would produce a cooling, which general circulation model (GCM) computations suggest could—subject to satisfactory resolution of technical and scientific problems identified herein—have the capacity to balance global warming up to the carbon dioxide-doubling point.

For your further reading and additional information, please go through the attached paper. I hope it will be helpful to you.

Well , the last time I heard was cloud seeding has backlashes . Simulations might project good outcomes , we can't control wind speed !!!

Next , is the butterfly effect that is the region that it covers . I think too many variables too less of control .

a very interesting topic , following

Dear Kirk,

Thank you for the invitation to answer yet another challenging question.

According to US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, climate intervention technologies "pose considerable risks and should not be deployed at this time." They suggest more research before taking the decisions. According to the systematic study reported by Parkes (2012)

http://homepages.see.leeds.ac.uk/~lecag/geo/Ben_Parkes_Thesis_Final.pdf

the problem is too complex to be resolved in a simple manner; the answer could be obtained only after the numerical experiment with the complex climate models. The question is: how certain are such models? They are definitely improving thank to the increasing computing power by reducing the truncation errors and through including some missing feedbacks related to clouds and radiative transfer. Perhaps after combing the deterministic models with some stochastic tools we can increase certainty of the simulations. I expect that after 20 years of such studies we can achieve the level of a certainty to answer your question.

A very cool question and so forth