College of Engineering Maths and Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, Laver Building, North Park Road, Exeter, EX4 4QE, UK.
Met Office Hadley Centre, Fitzroy Road, Exeter, EX1 3PB, UK.
Nat Commun. 2017 Nov 14;8(1):1382. doi: 10.1038/s41467-017-01606-0.
Solar geoengineering refers to a range of proposed methods for counteracting global warming by artificially reducing sunlight at Earth's surface. The most widely known solar geoengineering proposal is stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), which has impacts analogous to those from volcanic eruptions. Observations following major volcanic eruptions indicate that aerosol enhancements confined to a single hemisphere effectively modulate North Atlantic tropical cyclone (TC) activity in the following years. Here we investigate the effects of both single-hemisphere and global SAI scenarios on North Atlantic TC activity using the HadGEM2-ES general circulation model and various TC identification methods. We show that a robust result from all of the methods is that SAI applied to the southern hemisphere would enhance TC frequency relative to a global SAI application, and vice versa for SAI in the northern hemisphere. Our results reemphasise concerns regarding regional geoengineering and should motivate policymakers to regulate large-scale unilateral geoengineering deployments.
太阳能地球工程是指一系列通过人为减少地球表面阳光来抵消全球变暖的提议方法。最广为人知的太阳能地球工程提议是平流层气溶胶注入(SAI),它与火山爆发的影响类似。对主要火山爆发后的观测表明,局限于单个半球的气溶胶增强在随后的几年中有效地调节了北大西洋热带气旋(TC)活动。在这里,我们使用 HadGEM2-ES 环流模型和各种 TC 识别方法研究了单半球和全球 SAI 情景对北大西洋 TC 活动的影响。我们表明,所有方法的一个可靠结果是,与全球 SAI 应用相比,南半球的 SAI 将增加 TC 的频率,反之亦然,北半球的 SAI 则会减少 TC 的频率。我们的结果再次强调了对区域地球工程的关注,并应促使政策制定者规范大规模的单边地球工程部署。