Geoengineering techniques for countering climate change have been receiving much press recently as a `Plan B’ if a global deal to tackle climate change is not agreed at the COP15 negotiations in Copenhagen this December. However, the field is controversial as the methods may have unforeseen consequences, potentially making temperatures rise in some regions or reducing rainfall, and many aspects remain under-researched.
This focus issue of Environmental Research Letters is a collection of research articles, invited by David Keith, University of Calgary, and Ken Caldeira, Carnegie Institution, that present and evaluate different methods for engineering the Earth’s climate. Not only do the letters in this issue highlight various methods of climate engineering but they also detail the arguments for and against climate engineering as a concept.
Focus on Geoengineering at http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/subject/tag=geoengineering
IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science is an open-access proceedings service available atwww.iop.org/EJ/journal/ees
Focus on Climate Engineering: Intentional Intervention in the Climate System Contents
Modification of cirrus clouds to reduce global warming
David L Mitchell and William Finnegan
Climate engineering and the risk of rapid climate change
Andrew Ross and H Damon Matthews
Researching geoengineering: should not or could not?
Of mongooses and mitigation: ecological analogues to geoengineering
H Damon Matthews and Sarah E Turner
Toward ethical norms and institutions for climate engineering research
David R Morrow, Robert E Kopp and Michael Oppenheimer
On the possible use of geoengineering to moderate specific climate change impacts
Michael C MacCracken
The impact of geoengineering aerosols on stratospheric temperature and ozone
P Heckendorn, D Weisenstein, S Fueglistaler, B P Luo, E Rozanov, M Schraner, L W Thomason and T Peter
The fate of the Greenland Ice Sheet in a geoengineered, high CO2 world
Peter J Irvine, Daniel J Lunt, Emma J Stone and Andy Ridgwell
Assessing the benefits of crop albedo bio-geoengineering
Joy S Singarayer, Andy Ridgwell and Peter Irvine
Can we control El Niño?
Douglas G MacMynowski
Geoengineering by cloud seeding: influence on sea ice and climate system
Philip J Rasch, John Latham and Chih-Chieh (Jack) Chen
- Issue 4 (October-December 2009)